Mediocrity Quotes - Page 12

• It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our lives, from our work. To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society is to encourage excellence. But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies.

  Audre Lorde

  Destiny, Luxury, Giving

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.54, Crossing Press

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• The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hopeless, Doom, Imitator

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2014). “The Portable Emerson”, p.72, Penguin

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• Mediocrity always attacks excellence.

  Michael Beckwith

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  FaceBook post by Michael Bernard Beckwith from Oct 13, 2012

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• I wish I could say differently, but I really don't think so. There are too many musicians already for probably anyone to be noticed without some sort of commercial support. Even the most talented ones drown in a sea of mediocrity, and only the politically correct ones will ever be promoted (willingly...) by the press anyhow.

  Varg Vikernes

  Thinking, Sea, Support

  Source: heathenharvest.org

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• Over-seriousness is a warning sign for mediocrity and bureaucratic thinking. People who are seriously committed to mastery and high performance are secure enough to lighten up.

  Michael J. Gelb

  Thinking, People, Mastery

  Michael J. Gelb (1996). “Lessons from the Art of Juggling: How to Achieve Your Full Potential in Business, Learning, and Life”, Three Rivers Press

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• It takes far less energy to move from first-rate performance to excellence than it does to move from incompetence to mediocrity.

  Peter Drucker

  Moving, Excellence, Energy

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• There are no such men today. We have created a mechanism that makes it practically impossible for a real genius to appear. In my own field the biochemist Fritz Lipmann or the much maligned Linus Pauling were very talented people. But generally, geniuses everywhere seem to have died out by 1914. Today, most are mediocrities blown up by the winds of the time.

  Erwin Chargaff

  Real, Men, Wind

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• I always thought I'd get farther. I'd like to blame the world for what I've failed to do, but the failure - the failure that sometimes washes over me as anger, makes me so angry I could spit - is all mine, in the end. What made my obstacles insurmountable, what consigned me to mediocrity, is me, just me. I thought for so long, forever, that I was strong enough -- or I misunderstood what strength was.

  Claire Messud

  Strong, Long, Forever

  Claire Messud (2013). “The Woman Upstairs”, p.20, Vintage

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• We will meet our challenges head on and we will do it by rejecting the politics of mediocrity and corruption. You voted for change; I intend to deliver it. ... I will govern as a reformer.

  Rod Blagojevich

  Challenges, Corruption, Reformers

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• It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.

  Pope John Paul II

  Jesus, Catholic, Desire

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• It is not a question of skimming the surface of the art, it must be probed to its depths, for to seize upon superficial things only is to degenerate into mediocrity and obscurity.

  Jean-Georges Noverre

  Art, Superficial Things, Ballet

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• The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity.

  Ezra Pound

  Art, Historical, Art Is

  Ezra Pound, Richard Sieburth (2005). “The Spirit of Romance”, p.5, New Directions Publishing

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• I think Nigerians got it wrong from independence as people became so conscious of the divisions because we wanted so much to satisfy the plurality of interests. I will say, we neglected the importance of real value, human value and the quality of potential in human beings and we contrived phrases like geographical spread, regional quota, etc and allowed mediocrity to reign. I think that is the problem that we are dealing with till today.

  Wole Soyinka

  Real, Thinking, People

  Source: saharareporters.com

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• Those who build and perpetuate mediocrity...are motivated more by the fear of being left behind.

  James C. Collins

  Marketing, Motivated, Left Behind

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• Everything about mediocrity kills me.

  Ivanka Trump

  Kill Me

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• If you stick with a vision, it might not all work, but some of it will be absolute genius. To me, 15 minutes worth of absolute genius in a film is so much better than two hours of mediocrity. I would rather pay to see something different like that.

  Kim Cattrall

  Two, Vision, Different

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• At every turn you have to find a new kind of self-sovereignty over your environment. Every kid I see is at the mercy of Periscope, Twitter, or an Angry Bird of some description. People are shackled to their mediocrity by companies and businesses who want to consume your life with theirs.

  Daniel Gillies

  Kids, Self, People

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• You see it in schools all over... the concept that 'I'll be somewhat less than my best in order to make those around me feel more comfortable' is alive and well... I'm very keen that they understand that if they make themselves a little less than they can be, it is a one-way street to mediocrity.

  Fiona Wood

  Leadership, Education, Learning

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• Understand that the enemy always fights the hardest when he knows you are closest to your breakthrough. He'd leave you alone if he thought you were going to live in mediocrity. If you keep pressing on toward your promise, through faith and patience, you will get there.

  Joel Osteen

  Fighting, Godly, Promise

  Joel Osteen (2009). “Hope for Today Bible”, p.1404, Simon and Schuster

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• Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Friendship, Inspiration, Solitude

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.83, Harvard University Press

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• Pessimists are second rate people. They do not believe in life. ... All they want to do is drag you down and appease their own feelings of mediocrity and fear.

  Uell Stanley Andersen

  Believe, Optimistic, People

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• Take here the grand secret; if not of pleasing all, yet of displeasing none, and court mediocrity, avoid originality, and sacrifice to fashion.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Fashion, Sacrifice, Clothes

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• The amount of financial and imaginative energy that's put into mediocrity is just amazing, which I find to be fundamentally offensive as a human being.

  William Hurt

  Inspiration, Energy, Financial

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• There is a point of view among astronomical researchers that is generally referred to as the Principle of Mediocrity. ... If the Sun and its retinue of worlds is only one system among many, then many other systems will be like ours: home to life. Indeed, to the extent that this is true, we should be prepared for the possibility that, even in the Milky Way galaxy, billions of planets may be carpeted by the dirty, nasty business known as life.

  Seth Shostak

  Life, Dirty, Home

  "Do Aliens Exist in the Milky Way". PBS, September 12, 2014.

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• Once genius is submerged by bureaucracy, a nation is doomed to mediocrity.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Genius, Politics, Bureaucracy

  Remarks at a Promotion Ceremony for Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, December 3, 1973.

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