Mediocre Quotes - Page 18

• Publishers, theatrical managers, and critics ask not for the quality inherent in creative art, but will it meet with a good sale, will it suit the palate of the people? Alas, this palate is like a dumping ground; it relishes anything that needs no mental mastication. As a result, the mediocre, the ordinary, the commonplace represents the chief literary output.

  Emma Goldman

  Art, People, Creative

  Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism: Top Crime Collections”, p.39, 谷月社

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• As for critics, one mediocre writer is more valuable than ten good critics. They are like haughty, barren spinsters lodged in a maternity ward.

  Peter Greenaway

  Maternity, Barren, Spinsters

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Television is such a mediocre medium.

  Elizabeth Montgomery

  Television, Mediums

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• Human justice is very prolix, and yet at times quite mediocre; divine justice is more concise and needs no information from the prosecution, no legal papers, no interrogation of witnesses, but makes the guilty one his own informer and helps him with eternity's memory.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Memories, Divine Justice, Paper

  "Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Against Cowardliness". Book by Soren Kierkegaard, p. 351,

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• Growth does not always lead a business to build on success. All too often it converts a highly successful business into a mediocre large business.

  Richard Branson

  Successful, Growth, Doe

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• I had to produce a complete page - or two or three - in one day. I took a lot of pride in my work, and I hated to do a mediocre job. Evidently, some of the writers enjoyed my work best of all for that very reason.

  Joe Shuster

  Jobs, Pride, Artist

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• I had read enough mediocre scripts and was determined not to inflict another one on the world.

  Michael Arndt

  World, Scripts, Determined

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• I believe that creativity is a product of intelligence. I don't believe that creative work can be produced by fools, dullards, or mediocre people, except in the rarest of accidents. Creativity is a product of desire, thought, experience, experimentation and inner conviction. Taken together, these five qualities imply intelligence and commitment.

  Bruce Barnbaum

  Believe, Taken, Creativity

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• Suppose Mozart had tried to be original? It would have been like a man at the North Pole trying to walk north, and this is true of all of the rest of us. Striving after originality takes you far away from your true self, and makes your work mediocre.

  Keith Johnstone

  Men, Self, Trying

  Keith Johnstone (2012). “Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre”, p.88, Routledge

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• The temptation many creative people I know have is to strive for popularity. To make, do, and say things that other people like in the hopes of pleasing them. This motivation is nice. And sometimes the end result is good. But often what happens in trying so hard to please other people, especially many other people, the result is mediocre.

  Scott Berkun

  Motivation, Nice, People

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• One colleague who's been in the industry longer than I had been gave me a valuable piece of advice. "Stay close to the facts and observe things fully and report. Then you can be a mediocre journalist." I held onto his words when I worked and I've been following that advice for 16 years.

  Hark-Joon Lee

  Years, Advice, Pieces

  "This journalist didn’t just interview North Korean defectors, he followed them on their escape". Interview with Anna Fifield, www.washingtonpost.com. June 20, 2015.

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• The post-war "publish or perish" tyranny must end. The profession has become obsessed with quantity rather than quality. [...] One brilliant article should outweigh one mediocre book.

  Camille Paglia

  War, Book, Quality

  "Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf". Arion, Third Series, Vol. 1, No. 2, Spring 1991.

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• The mediocre mind has no capacity for understanding. It is stuck somewhere near thirteen years in its mental age, or even below it. The person may be forty, fifty, seventy years old - that does not matter, that is the physical age. He has been growing old, but he has not been growing up. You should note the distinction. Growing old, every animal does. Growing up, only a few human beings manage.

  Rajneesh

  Motivational, Growing Up, Animal

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• A mathematician of the first rank, Laplace quickly revealed himself as only a mediocre administrator; from his first work we saw that we had been deceived. Laplace saw no question from its true point of view; he sought subtleties everywhere; had only doubtful ideas, and finally carried the spirit of the infinitely small into administration.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Work, Math, Ideas

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• The first method is that of a schemer and leads only to mediocre results; the other method is the path of genius and changes the face of the world.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Power, Genius, World

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• Craft' gets a bad rap. Mediocre art is not caused by craft; it is caused by artists. Good art employs whatever craft works best.

  Walter Darby Bannard

  Art, Rap, Mediocrity

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• Most child welfare agencies tend to embrace secrecy because the people who lead them tend to be mediocre and don't want you to see how poor a job they are doing.

  Richard Wexler

  Jobs, Children, Agency

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• Dear young people, let us not be satisfied with a mediocre life. Be amazed by what is true and beautiful, what is of God!

  Pope Francis

  Beautiful, People, Mediocre Life

  Pope Francis “The Blessing of Family: Inspiring Words from Pope Francis”, Franciscan Media

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• Do not be content to live a mediocre Christian life: walk with determination along the path of holiness.

  Pope Francis

  Christian, Determination, Holiness

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• A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug addict, or a disc jockey, or a crummy mediocre politician. A man can be a hero because he suffers and despairs; or because he thinks logically and analytically; or because he is "sensitive"; or because he is cruel. Wealth establishes a man as a hero, and so does poverty. Virtually any circumstance in a man's life will make him a hero to some group of people and has a mythic rendering in the culture - in literature, art, theater, or the daily newspapers.

  Andrea Dworkin

  Art, Hero, Men

  "Our Blood". Book by Andrea Dworkin, 1976.

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• Meditate well so you can be a good instrument of eternity. You could have a mediocre meditation today, but you're not going to. Today you might run into someone who you might talk to about the dharma.

  Frederick Lenz

  Running, Buddhism, Meditation

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• It is so much worse to be a mediocre artist than to be a mediocre post-office clerk.

  Rudolf Bing

  Artist, Office, Clerks

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• I do not know whether it is the view of the Court that a judge must be thick-skinned or just thick-headed, but nothing in my experience or observation confirms the idea that he is insensitive to publicity. Who does not prefer good to ill report of his work? And if fame a good public name is, as Milton said, the "last infirmity of noble mind", it is frequently the first infirmity of a mediocre one.

  Robert H. Jackson

  Views, Names, Ideas

  "Craig v. Harney, 331 U. S. 367, 396". Judicial opinion, 1947.

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• All her life she [Chantal] had been carefully, heroically watching over mediocre beings who were hardly real, over things of no value.

  Georges Bernanos

  Real, Values

  "Joy". Book by Georges Bernanos, 1929.

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• Mediocre men sometimes fear great office, and when they do not aim at it, or when they refuse it, all that is to be concluded is that they are aware of their mediocrity.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Men, Office, Mediocrity

  Jean de La Bruyère, Luc de Clapiers marquis de Vauvenargues (1903). “La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims”

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