Second Rate Quotes

• First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people.

  Leo Rosten

  Business, People, Firsts

  8 Copy quote

• I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.

  Richard Strauss

  Inspiring, Music, Second Chance

  57 Copy quote

• The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.

  A. A. Milne

  Happiness, Integrity, Thinking

  91 Copy quote

• A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.

  Abraham Maslow

  Food, Creativity, Creative

  Abraham H. Maslow, Deborah C. Stephens (2000). “The Maslow Business Reader”, p.22, John Wiley & Sons

  64 Copy quote

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• What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.

  Doris Lessing

  Love, Inspirational, Needs

  Doris May Lessing (1994). “The Golden Notebook”, HarperCollins Publishers

  44 Copy quote

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• All new states are invested, more or less, by a class of noisy, second-rate men who are always in favor of rash and extreme measures, but Texas was absolutely overrun by such men.

  Sam Houston

  Men, Second Chance, Texas

  17 Copy quote
• 

  Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.

  Judy Garland

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  "Business Etiquette for the Nineties: Your Ticket to Career Success". Book by Lou Kennedy, 1992.

  157 Copy quote

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• One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Second Chance, Mind, Stories

  "Of Opinions". "Characters", Book by Jean De La Bruyère, www.ourcivilisation.com. 1688.

  9 Copy quote

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• Always be a first-rate version of yourself.

  Audrey Hepburn

  Inspirational, Graduation, Bullying

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

  56 Copy quote

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• There is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain.

  G. H. Hardy

  Men, Profound, He Man

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

  12 Copy quote

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• She says it's really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Falling In Love, Husband, Rate

  4 Copy quote

• The things that I can't have I want, And what I have seems second-rate, The things I want to do I can't, And what I have to do I hate.

  Don Marquis

  Hate, Want, Rate

  Don Marquis (1921). “Noah An' Jonah An' Cap'n John Smith: A Book of Humorous Verse”

  9 Copy quote

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• The bad teacher imposes his ideas and his methods on his pupils, and such originality as they may have is lost in the second-rate art of imitation.

  Stephen Neill

  Teacher, Art, Teaching

  14 Copy quote

• First-rate science fiction was, and remains, more interesting than second-rate art.

  Clive James

  Art, Interesting, Firsts

  Clive James (2015). “From the Land of Shadows”, p.77, Pan Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

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• I think playing solo is a second rate activity, really. For me, playing is about playing with other people.

  Derek Bailey

  Thinking, People, Solo

  4 Copy quote

• To be robbed and betrayed by a fiendish underground conspiracy, or by the earthly agents of Satan, is at least a romantic sort of plight - it suggests at least a grand Hollywood-ready confrontation between good and evil - but to be coldly ripped off over and over again by a bunch of bloodless, second-rate schmoes, schmoes you chose, you elected, is not something anyone will take much pleasure in bragging about.

  Matt Taibbi

  Evil, Betrayed, Hollywood

  12 Copy quote

• To keep any great nation up to a high standard of civilization there must be enough superior characters to hold the balance of power, but the very moment the balance of power gets into the hands of second-rate men and women, a decline of that nation is inevitable.

  Christian D. Larson

  Character, Men, Hands

  7 Copy quote

• There is no room in music for the second-rate - it might just as well be the nineteenth-rate.

  Gustav Holst

  Might, Rooms, Rate

  27 Copy quote

• Canada appears content to become a second-tier socialistic country, boasting ever more loudly about its economy and social services to mask its second-rate status.

  Stephen Harper

  Country, Canada, Mask

  "National Post" Newspaper, December 8, 2000.

  14 Copy quote

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• It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done. Statesmen despise publicists, painters despise art-critics, and physiologists, physicists, or mathematicians have usually similar feelings: there is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.

  G. H. Hardy

  Appreciation, Art, Writing

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

  8 Copy quote

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• Set exorbitant standards, and give your people hell when they don't live up to them. There is nothing so demoralizing as a boss who tolerates second rate work.

  David Ogilvy

  People, Giving, Boss

  David Ogilvy (2012). “The Unpublished David Ogilvy”, p.70, Profile Books

  10 Copy quote

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• You might lose your spontaneity and, instead of composing first-rate Gershwin, end up with second rate Ravel.

  Maurice Ravel

  Ravel, Might, Firsts

  19 Copy quote

• But no work from a first rate mind is ever really second rate.

  Gerald Finzi

  Mind, Firsts, Rate

  7 Copy quote

• He must understand that if he is the world's finest plum and someone he loves does not like plums, he has the choice of becoming a banana. But he must be warned that if he chooses to become a banana, he will be a second rate banana. But he can always be the best plum.

  Leo Buscaglia

  Love, Choices, Doe

  14 Copy quote

• The British Islands are small islands and our people numerically a little people. Their only claim to world importance depends upon their courage and enterprise, and a people who will not stand up to the necessity of air service planned on a world scale, and taking over thousands of aeroplanes and thousands of men from the onset of peace, has no business to pretend anything more than a second rate position in the world. We cannot be both Imperial and mean.

  H. G. Wells

  Mean, Men, Islands

  6 Copy quote