Second Rate Quotes - Page 2

• We're worn into grooves by Time - by our habits. In the end, these grooves are going to show whether we've been second-rate or champions, each in his way, in dispatching the affairs of every day. By choosing our habits, we determine the grooves into which Time will wear us; and these are grooves that enrich our lives and make for ease of mind, peace, happiness - achievement.

  Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr.

  Life, Peace, Achievement

  American Magazine, Vol. 103, (p. 183), 1927.

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• Australia is a lucky country run by second-rate people who share its luck.

  Donald Horne

  Running, Country, Australia

  Donald Horne (1981). “Winner take all?”

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• Never cut corners, or accept anything that's second-rate.

  Bruce Oldfield

  Cutting, Accepting, Rate

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• The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.

  Agnes de Mille

  Passion, Creativity, Creative

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• There is no democracy in physics. We can't say that some second-rate guy has as much right to opinion as Fermi.

  Luis Walter Alvarez

  Science, Guy, Democracy

  "The Politics of Pure Science". Book by Daniel S. Greenberg, p. 43, 1967.

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• I used to think that all my Wings stuff was second-rate stuff, but I began to meet younger kids, not kids from my Beatle generation, who would say, We really love this song.

  Paul McCartney

  Song, Kids, Thinking

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• You aren't ill: it is just that you are made of second-rate materials

  Natalia Ginzburg

  Made, Ill, Rate

  Natalia Ginzburg (1989). “Family Sayings”, p.98, Arcade Publishing

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• Nothing is more painful to me than the disdain with which people treat second-rate authors, as if there were room only for the first-raters.

  Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

  Reading, People, Rooms

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• Shining outward qualities, although they may excite first-rate expectations, are not unusually found to be the companions of second-rate abilities.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Expectations, Shining, Quality

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.135

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• If Richard Nixon was second-rate, what in the world is third-rate?

  Joseph Heller

  World, Rate, Thirds

  1979 Good as Gold, ch.6

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• The English mind is always in a rage. The intellect of the race is wasted in the sordid and stupid quarrels of second-rate politicians or third-rate theologians.

  Oscar Wilde

  Stupid, Race, Mind

  Intentions "The Critic as Artist" pt. 2 (1891)

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• You see only the productions of second-rate folk who are in a hurry to get wealth and fame. The true knowledge, the deadly knowledge, is still kept secret. But, believe me, my friend, it is there.

  John Buchan

  Believe, Secret, Wealth

  John Buchan (2016). “The Complete Works of John Buchan (Unabridged): Thriller Classics, Spy Novels, Supernatural Tales, Short Stories, Poetry, Historical Works, The Great War Writings, Essays, Biographies & Memoirs – All in One Volume”, p.1672, e-artnow

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• Astronomy is something like the ministry. No one should go into it without a call. I got that unmistakable call, and I know that even if I were second-rate or third-rate, it was astronomy that mattered.

  Edwin Powell Hubble

  Space, Ministry, Astronomy

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• No academy could have given me all I discovered by getting my teeth into the exhibitions, the shop windows, and the museums of Paris . Beginning with the market - where, for lack of money, I bought only a piece of a long cucumber - the workman in his blue overall, the most ardent followers of Cubism , everything showed a definite feeling for proportion, clarity, an accurate sense of form, of a more painterly kind of painting, even in the canvases of second-rate artists.

  Marc Chagall

  Artist, Blue, Paris

  "Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 - 1922". Book by Christoph Vitali, p. 29, 1991.

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• Once you've been committed to a mental institution you're considered a second-rate citizen from then on and retroactive.

  Mary Jane Ward

  Citizens, Institutions, Committed

  Mary Jane Ward (1969). “Counterclockwise”

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• Every time I get a bit worried about having made some second rate choices in life I go back and read about the Suffragettes or William Wilberforce, people who were "wrong" in their own time and think, ah well.

  Bob Brown

  Thinking, People, Choices

  "Bob Brown and the media: 'I'll take them on ... they've crossed the line'". Interview with John Keane, theconversation.com. June 2, 2011.

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• After 10 years TNA talent still have an inferiority complex. If you don't think that you work for the BEST COMPANY EVER then nobody else will! As a performer you hav to act and project that where you work is the pinnacle of competition! If not then the whole place just seems second rate.

  Chris Jericho

  Thinking, Wwe, Years

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• Why become a second-rate Ravel when you're already a first-rate Gershwin?

  Maurice Ravel

  Ravel, Firsts, Rate

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• The great trouble with you Americans is that you are still under the influence of that second-rate - shall I say third-rate? - mind, Karl Marx.

  H. G. Wells

  America, Mind, Influence

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• Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.

  G. H. Hardy

  Appreciation, Mind, Criticism

  G. H. Hardy (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.61, Cambridge University Press

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• As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you're going to be a second-rate artist.

  Margaret Atwood

  Loyalty, Art, Firsts

  Interview with Marilyn Berlin Snell, www.motherjones.com. July, 1997.

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• First rate mathematicians choose first rate people, but second rate mathematicians choose third rate people.

  Andre Weil

  People, Firsts, Mathematician

  "Comic Sections: Book of Mathematical Jokes, Humour, Wit and Wisdom". Book by Des MacHale, 1993.

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• There was no point in doing art if you were going to be second-rate.

  Christopher Bram

  Art, Rate, No Point

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• My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses–the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions–which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Mirrors, Flying, Black

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated”, p.414, Vintage

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• A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he set out, will have condemned himself to second-hand thoughts and to second-rate friends.

  Cyril Connolly

  Hands, Lazy, Laziness

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