Mediocrity Quotes - Page 16

• But why diminish your soul being run-of-the-mill at something? Mediocrity: now there is ugliness for you. Mediocrity's a hairball coughed up on the Persian carpet of Creation.

  Tom Robbins

  Running, Soul, Creation

  Tom Robbins (2010). “Half Asleep In Frog Pyjamas”, p.174, Random House

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• We don't want to think about our weaknesses. We don't want to talk about them, and we certainly don't want anyone else to point them out. This is a classic sign of mediocrity, and this mediocrity has a firm grip on the Church and humanity at this moment in history.

  Matthew Kelly

  Thinking, Humanity, Church

  Matthew Kelly (2002). “Rediscover Catholicism: A Spiritual Guide to Living with Passion & Purpose”, p.118, BookBaby

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• You can always spot a 'television personality', even when they aren't actually on television, because they carry their 'made-up' persona in front of them, like some sort of baffler, or Ready Brek force field. Their reach for notoriety predicated on that fulsome mediocrity of talent detailed above has become frozen in their faces.

  Will Self

  Force Fields, Personality, Frozen

  "Chris the saviour". www.theguardian.com. March 9, 1997.

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• If you're a nobody, if your work has no impact, then it deserves to be praised. If, however, you climb out of that state of mediocrity and are a success, then your defying 'the law' and deserve to be punished.

  Paulo Coelho

  Life, Impact, Law

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• Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own - they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal - for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire.

  Ayn Rand

  Loneliness, Achievement, Mind

  Ayn Rand (2005). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.348, Penguin

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• Moderation? It's mediocrity, fear, and confusion in disguise. It's the devil's dilemma. It's neither doing nor not doing. It's the wobbling compromise that makes no one happy. Moderation is for the bland, the apologetic, for the fence-sitters of the world afraid to take a stand. It's for those afraid to laugh or cry, for those afraid to live or die. Moderation...is lukewarm tea, the devil's own brew.

  Dan Millman

  Courage, Fear, Laughter

  Dan Millman (2009). “Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives”, p.163, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The ultimate freedom for creative groups is the freedom to experiment with new ideas. Some skeptics insist that innovation is expensive. In the long run, innovation is cheap. Mediocrity is expensive—and autonomy can be the antidote.”   TOM KELLEY General Manager, IDEO

  Daniel H. Pink

  Running, Business, Ideas

  Daniel H. Pink (2010). “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”, p.90, Canongate Books

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• There are teachers and students with square minds who are by nature meant to undergo the fascination of catagories. For them, 'schools' and 'movements' are everything; by painting a group symbol on the brow of mediocrity, they condone their own incomprehension of true genius.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Teacher, School, Squares

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• Just as King Midas turned everything to gold, Stalin turned everything to mediocrity.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Kings, Gold, Midas

  Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (1972). “The First Circle”

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• A mismatched outfit, a slightly defective denture, an exquisite mediocrity of the soul-those are the details that make a woman real, alive. The women you see on posters or in fashion magazines-the ones all the women try to imitate nowadays-how can they be attractive? They have no reality of their own; they're just the sum of a set of abstract rules. They aren't born of human bodies; they hatch ready-made from the computers." ~The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

  Milan Kundera

  Beauty, Fashion, Laughter

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• Life gives to all the choice. You can satisfy yourself with mediocrity if you wish. You can be common, ordinary, dull, colorless, or yyou can channel your life so that it will be clean, vibrant, useful, progressive, colorful, and rich.

  Spencer W. Kimball

  Giving, Choices, Wish

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• Well, teachers have been profoundly demoralized in recent years and are often treated with contempt by politicians. There's a great deal of reckless rhetoric in Washington about the mediocrity of the teaching profession - and I don't find that to be true at all.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Teacher, Teaching, Years

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• For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.

  Hermann Hesse

  Class, Optimism, Contentment

  Hermann Hesse (2013). “Steppenwolf: A Novel”, p.27, Macmillan

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• nobody means to get carried away in mediocrity, but it happens, it happens unless you think about everything you do, unless you make every choice the best one you know how to make.

  Richard Bach

  Mean, Thinking, Choices

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• One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Passion, Thinking, Feelings

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• The mark of mediocrity is to look for precedent.

  Norman Mailer

  Looks, Precedent, Mark

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• I admit that I myself am far from having a complete command of every topic I touch on, but my knowledge of my subject is always greater than the interest or the understanding of my auditors. You see, there is one very good thing about mankind; the mediocre masses make very few demands of the mediocrities of a higher order, submitting stupidly and cheerfully to their guidance

  Alfred de Vigny

  Stupid, Order, Understanding

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• Complacency is the forerunner of mediocrity. You can never work too hard on attitudes, effort and technique.

  Don Meyer

  Motivational, Sports, Attitude

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• Sir, the slowness of genius is hard to bear, but the slowness of mediocrity is insufferable.

  Henry Thomas Buckle

  Genius, Chess, Bears

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• To love what is below the human is degradation; to love what is human for the sake of the human is mediocrity; to love the human for the sake of the Divine is enriching; to love the Divine for its own sake is sanctity.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Degradation, Sake, Divine

  Fulton J. Sheen (1951). “Three to Get Married”

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• If an historian be an unbeliever in all heroism, if he be a man who brings every thing down to the level of a common mediocrity, depend upon it, the truth is not found in such a writer.

  Matthew Arnold

  Men, Heroism, Levels

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• Regulators are power-lusting mediocrities.

  Yaron Brook

  Lust, Regulators

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• All technical refinements discourage me. Perfect photography, larger screens, hi-fi sound, all make it possible for mediocrities slavishly to reproduce nature; and this reproduction bores me. What interests me is the interpretation of life by an artist. The personality of the film maker interests me more than the copy of an object.

  Jean Renoir

  Photography, Artist, Perfect

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• Let others lead small lives, but not you

  Jim Rohn

  Purpose, Small Life, Real Estate Motivational

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• There is no substitute under the heavens for productive labor. It is the process by which dreams become realities. It is the process by which idle visions become dynamic achievements. Most of us are inherently lazy. We would rather play than work. We would rather loaf than work...But it is work that spells the difference in the life of a man or woman. It is stretching our minds and utilizing the skills of our hands that lift us from mediocrity.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Dream, Work, Reality

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