354 Quotes About Mediocrity

If everyone’s going to think of me as a lunatic then I may as well benefit from it. At least it’ll redeem me from being mediocre

In the Middle Ages, anyone who tried to escape their duties to society - negative libertarians, in other words, with which today's world is full - were not deemed worthy of consideration. They were pathetic. They were Last Men. Today's world produces them by the legions. They are the primary output of modernity.

Don’t settle for good when you were destined to be great.

To her, "above-average" had become only a small, yet frustrating step up from the mundane. Mediocrity with benefits.

In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest politician, but of the man with the best bedside manner. It is the decoration conferred on mediocrity by ignorance.

I like to equate the mediocrity of everyday matters with the force of gravity. It pulls you downwards. For wisdom to be obtained, the escape velocity must be reached and maintained.

A hidden poetry that will be lost if any mediocrity is shed. Genius is a casualty. The poetry must never be conspicuous — its scent is only detectable when subtle.

Mediocrity is comfortable, it makes you join the crowd, but would you like to be remembered as part of the crowd or someone followed by the crowd? For rising above the crowd - don't be a slave to procedures, practice more & improvise.

My conception stands opposed to social science as a set of bureaucratic techniques which inhibit social inquiry by ‘methodolocigal’ pretentions, which congest such work by obscurantist conceptions, or which trivialize it by concern with minor problems unconnected with publicly relevant issues.