Mediocrity Quotes - Page 5

• Leaders set high standards. Refuse to tolerate mediocrity or poor performance.

  Brian Tracy

  Leadership, High Standards, Poor

  Brian Tracy (2008). “Effective Leadership”, p.9, Jaico Publishing House

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• Let others leave their future in someone else's hands, but not you.

  Jim Rohn

  Future, Hands, Purpose

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• In sum, all actions and habits are to be esteemed good or evil by their causes and usefulness in reference to the commonwealth, and not by their mediocrity, nor by their being commended. For several men praise several customs, and, contrarily, what one calls vice, another calls virtue, as their present affections lead them.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Men, Evil, Vices

  Thomas Hobbes (2014). “Behemoth or The Long Parliament”, p.45, University of Chicago Press

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• They keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity.

  Bob Parr

  Creating, Way, Celebrate

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• It is an error common to many artists, who strive merely to avoid mistakes, when all our efforts should be to create positive and important work. Better positive and important with mistakes and failures than perfect mediocrity.

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Mistake, Artist

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• Never surrender to the momentum of mediocrity.

  Marlon Brando

  Momentum, Surrender, Never Surrender

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• Mediocrity is excellence in the eyes of the mediocre.

  Joseph Joubert

  Inspirational, Eye, Excellence

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• What the crowd requires is mediocrity of the highest order.

  Antoine-Augustin Preault

  Success, Work, Order

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• A common danger tends to concord. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In Communism, inequality comes from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence.

  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  Strong, Equality, Excellence

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• A man who fears ridicule will never go far, for good or ill: he remains on this side of this talents, and even if he has genius, he is doomed to mediocrity.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Men, Sides, Genius

  Emile M. Cioran (1976). “The Trouble with Being Born”, Viking Books

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• Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Teacher, Retirement, Teaching

  Warren G. Bennis, Patricia Ward Biederman (1997). “Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration”, p.8, Basic Books

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• The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

  John Stuart Mill

  Inspiration, Power, World

  John Stuart Mill (2012). “On Liberty”, p.55, Courier Corporation

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• There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority.

  Orison Swett Marden

  Differences, Excellence, Littles

  Orison Swett Marden (1997). “Exceptional Employee”, p.125

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• Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Wisdom, People, Ambitious

  1881 Virginibus Puerisque,'Crabbed Age and Youth'.

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• All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity.

  James F. Cooper

  Character, Greatness, Men

  "The American Democrat: Or, Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America". Essay by James F. Cooper, 1838.

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• Today is the most important day of our lives.

  Nhat Hanh

  Important, Today, Thinking Differently

  Thich Nhat Hanh (2006). “A Pebble for Your Pocket”, p.23, Parallax Press

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• Mediocrity is not allowed to poets, either by the gods or men.

  Horace

  Men, Poet

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• Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them.

  Joseph Heller

  Success, Humorous, People

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• There are circumstances of peculiar difficulty and danger, where a mediocrity of talent is the most fatal quantum that a man can possibly possess. Had Charles the First and Louis the Sixteenth been more wise or more weak, more firm or more yielding, in either case they had both of them saved their heads.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Wise, Men, Peculiar

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”, p.96

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• Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Teacher, Excellence, Exemplary

  Warren G. Bennis, Patricia Ward Biederman (2009). “The Essential Bennis”, p.142, John Wiley & Sons

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• Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Courage, Honesty

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• Among many parallels which men of imagination have drawn between the natural and moral state of the world, it has been observed that happiness as well as virtue consists in mediocrity.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Imagination, World

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy, Francis Pearson Walesby (1825). “The Rambler”, p.185

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• Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings; but those who are in a state of mediocrity are best flattered upon their beauty, or at least their graces; for every woman who is not absolutely ugly thinks herself handsome.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Beautiful, Thinking, Grace

  Lord Chesterfield, David Roberts (2008). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.92, Oxford University Press

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• Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Inspirational, Life, Failure

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• Follow your bliss. That which you love you must spend your life doing, as passionately and as perfectly as your heart, mind and instincts allow. The sooner you identify that bliss, which surely resides in the soul of most human beings, the greater your chance of a truly successful life. In the act of creativity, being careful guarantees sameness and mediocrity, which means your work will be invisible. Better to be reckless than careful. Better to be bold than safe. Better to have your work seen and remembered, or you've struck out. There is no middle ground.

  George Lois

  Love You, Heart, Creativity

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