Mediocrity Quotes - Page 3

• We encourage one another in mediocrity.

  Charles Lamb

  Charles Lamb (1871). “Letters”, p.58

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• It is fatal for art if it is forced into official respectability and condemned to sterile mediocrity.

  Gustave Courbet

  Art, Ifs, Officials

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• Nothing is good but mediocrity. The majority has settled that, and finds fault with him who escapes it at whichever end... To leave the mean is to abandon humanity.

  Blaise Pascal

  Mean, Humanity, Majority

  Blaise Pascal (2010). “Thoughts, Letters and Minor Works”, p.127, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Half talent is no talent.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Half, Talent

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• Mediocrity would always win by force of numbers, but it would win only more mediocrity.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Winning, Numbers, Force

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• Perhaps it's true that I'm very hard on myself, but that's better than exhibiting mediocre work... too few were satisfactory enough to trouble the public with.

  Claude Monet

  Trouble, Enough, Mediocre

  Claude Monet (2005). “Monet”, Rizzoli International Publications

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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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• The maxim of Cleobulus, "Mediocrity is best," has been long considered a universal principle, extending through the whole compass of life and nature. The experience of every age seems to have given it new confirmation, and to show that nothing, however specious or alluring, is pursued with propriety or enjoyed with safety beyond certain limits.

  Samuel Johnson

  Safety, Long, Age

  Samuel Johnson (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.68

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• Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.

  Margot Fonteyn

  Life, Dance, Being Yourself

  "Margot Fonteyn : Autobiography‎" by Margot Fonteyn, (p. 81), 1975.

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• The idea for which this nation stands will not survive if the highest goal free man can set themselves is an amiable mediocrity. Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.

  John W. Gardner

  Men, Ideas, Goal

  Dr. John W. Gardner (2015). “Excellence: Can We Be Equal And Excellent Too?”, p.171, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• The world doesn't need any more mediocrity or hedged bets.

  Anne Rice

  Needs, Literature, World

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• Literature is air, and Im suffocating in mediocrity.

  Armand Assante

  Air, Literature, Suffocating

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• When we consider that each of us has only one life to live, isn’t it rather tragic to find men and women, with brains capable of comprehending the stars and the planets, talking about the weather; men and women, with hands capable of creating works of art, using those hands only for routine tasks; men and women, capable of independent thought, using their minds as a bowling-alley for popular ideas; men and women, capable of greatness, wallowing in mediocrity; men and women, capable of self-expression, slowly dying a mental death while they babble the confused monotone of the mob?

  Neil Gaiman

  Art, Stars, Confused

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• Mediocrity has no greater consolation than in the thought that genius is not immortal.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Knowledge, Genius, Immortal

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1868). “Novels and Tales by Goethe”, p.153

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• The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.

  James F. Cooper

  Democracy, Tendencies, All Things

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• There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.

  Paul Gauguin

  Fashion, Art, Clothes

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

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• All greatness of character is dependent on individuality.

  James F. Cooper

  Character, Greatness, Individuality

  "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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• The reason they want you to fit in... is that once you do, then they can ignore you.

  Seth Godin

  Want, Fit, Reason

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• Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs.

  Max Beerbohm

  Humility, Acceptance, Triumph

  Saturday Review, 5 Nov. 1904 See Maugham 11

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• Intellectuals range through the finest gradations of kind and quality: from those who are merely educated neurotics, usually with strong hidden reactionary tendencies, through mediocrities of all kinds, to men of real brains and sensibility, more or less stiffened into various respectabilities or substitutes for respectability. The number of Ignorant Specialists is large. The number of hysterics and compulsives is also large.

  Louise Bogan

  Strong, Real, Men

  Louise Bogan (2005). “A poet's prose: selected writings of Louise Bogan : with the uncollected poems”, Swallow Press

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• One must indeed be ignorant of the methods of genius to suppose that it allows itself to be cramped by forms. Forms are for mediocrity, and it is fortunate that mediocrity can act only according to routine. Ability takes its flight unhindered.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Ignorant, Routine, Genius

  Napoleon Bonaparte “Napoleon in his own words from the French of Jules Bertaut”, Рипол Классик

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• No wonder we are all more or less pleased with mediocrity, since it leaves us at rest, and gives the same comfortable feeling as when one associates with his equals.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Giving, Feelings, Wonder

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• Individuality is either the mark of genius or the reverse. Mediocrity finds safety in standardization.

  Frederick E. Crane

  Safety, Individuality, Genius

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• Radio is a bag of mediocrity where little men with carbon minds wallow in sluice of their own making.

  Fred Allen

  Funny, Humor, Men

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• Mediocrity in politics is not to be despised. Greatness is not needed.

  Hans Magnus Enzensberger

  Greatness, Politics, Politician

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