Top 95 Mediocrity Quotes

My father’s card-playing buddies treated me as a plain, ordinary, commonplace kid destined for mediocrity – or less. I suppose they expected that I would spend my life as a clerk of some sort.

Education in India has made monumental progress since Independence but continues to face daunting challenges at multiple levels, particularly in terms of quality, infrastructure and dropout rates. We have islands of excellence floating in a sea of mediocrity.

There’s so much in the 21st century that is stymied by bureaucracy and mediocrity and committee.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity.

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

Gary Sinise and I go the furthest back of the Steppenwolf people; we were both saved from academic mediocrity as sophomores by being cast in ‘West Side Story’ by this transformationally beautiful teacher named Barbara Patterson.

What compromises women – babies, domesticity, mediocrity – compromises writing even more.

Being famous is not something that would make me feel successful – unless one was striving for mediocrity.

Virtue is defined to be mediocrity, of which either extreme is vice.

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

We have these ambitions that are very hard to accomplish because life puts us in our place. We have this battle with mediocrity.

The way that I am now, I don’t want to accept mediocrity. I don’t want to accept the easy road.

By and large, talent is in such short supply that mediocrity can be taken for brilliance rather more than genius can go undiscovered.

We humans can get used to anything. It really is remarkable. The problem is that we often use this glorious ability of ours to stay stuck in mediocrity. Oh, the years we waste adapting to lousy marriages, soul-sucking jobs, being friends with people who are rude to waitresses.

Fame can take interesting men and thrust mediocrity upon them.

Be it at JNU or any institute, students want India to shine. They want the country to get rid of mediocrity and hypocrisy.

Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity.

The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

The ’90s weren’t my finest years artistically. I wrote some good songs in there, but in terms of my vision of getting the paint on the canvas, that was not my best time. I didn’t like the fact that I had fallen into mediocrity.

My biggest concern is that America is drifting towards mediocrity and that people don’t recognize – and by people I’m meaning Washington – don’t recognize the sense of urgency and the fact that I don’t think this is a crisis anymore. I think it’s an emergency.

If you’re an artist and you’re on Twitter, you are doomed to mediocrity.

I have a horror of not rising above mediocrity.

Our country is slowly but surely moving – and I’ve seen it over and over again in many instances in government – toward a culture of mediocrity.

When you have had a taste of excellence, you cannot go back to mediocrity.

The thing is, I don’t believe in most of what’s done. 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.

Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.

It was the ’70s when mediocrity came in Hindi films. That’s when the actor called Rajesh Khanna joined the industry. For all his success, I think Mr. Khanna was a very limited actor. In fact, he was a poor actor.

We live in an age of mediocrity.

Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary.

In America, I would say New York and New Orleans are the two most interesting food towns. In New Orleans, they don’t have a bad deli. There’s no mediocrity accepted.

A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius.

The only sin is mediocrity.

I want to add something worthwhile rather than just chucking loads of stuff into the world. I don’t want to feel responsible for adding to the soup of mediocrity.

All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity.

I do respond well to a director, a teacher – someone who doesn’t accept mediocrity.

Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises… the best excellence in the children of any other land.

Mechanization best serves mediocrity.

Would it be preferable to argue for a fairer system whereby the unremarkable should be considered leadership material? With such an attitude, can we wonder why mediocrity is now a mark of Labour’s hierarchy?

The present reeks of mediocrity and the atom bomb.

Everything about mediocrity kills me.

There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking.

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

I think we live in an age of increasing mediocrity.

Mediocrity scares me. It’s the fear of not being as good as you want to be. If you give over to that fear, it will sabotage you. As much as I can, I try to use that fear to guide me.

I find mediocrity hard. I find that whole area difficult. I’m a very passionate person; I care very much about what I do. I believe I give it a lot, so it’s gotta be good; otherwise, what’s the point?

I truthfully think, a consistent coach over 30 years, probably, I’d rather be that than having one championship and mediocrity for years.

There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling.

The difference between greatness and mediocrity is often how an individual views a mistake.

It’s a sign of mediocrity when you demonstrate gratitude with moderation.

Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best.

Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them.

You have to connect with your market and your employees. First, understand that what your market says is fact and what you say is opinion. Then, take the time to create a good connection with your employees. Without those two key connections, your business will be stuck in mediocrity forever.

I react very badly when mediocrity throws a tantrum of entitlement.

We have no Arab intellectuals of international stature because we live in a state of generalized mediocrity. We are suspended in the pit without touching the bottom.

Do you know what the root of mediation is? Mediocrity!

Mediocrity never goes away – but neither, I hope, do those who are willing to challenge it.

A common danger tends to concord. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In Communism, inequality comes from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence.

We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself.

Acceptance and assimilation, you know, breeds mediocrity and perhaps an even more sheep-like conformism in terms of what kind of music you’re supposed to listen to if you’re gay… What are you supposed to look like? What’s your body supposed to look like?

One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could; but if not, why try at all? One wants to be very something, very great, very heroic; or if not that, then at least very stylish and very fashionable. It is this everlasting mediocrity that bores me.

I think that Tupac was the trendsetter, the high mark. What we hope his music will continue to do is to at least encourage people away from mediocrity, because he was not a mediocre artist. When he was alive, people competed. There was a lot of competition, and a lot of the artists were better for it.

Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.

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.

Things can change only through strong personalities. I am not very good at supporting ignorance and mediocrity, so maybe this leads to arrogant gestures and arrogant responses. So, nobody’s perfect.