Mediocre Man Quotes & Sayings

In intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makes mistakes of opposite kinds: in a remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds a mediocre man; and often, even in a mediocre artist, one finds a very remarkable man. — Friedrich Nietzsche

When a man devotes himself body and spirit to a single object, if he has training and aptitude, no matter how mediocre he may be in ordinary affairs, he will produce something so nearly akin to a work of genius as to deceive half the judges who think themselves competent to decide between genius and talent.
("The Phantom Model") — Hume Nisbet

Every successful man or great genius has three particular qualities in common. The most conspicuous of these is that they all produce a prodigious amount of work. The second is that they never know fatigue. And the third is that their minds grow more brilliant as they grow older, instead of less brilliant. Great men's lives begin at forty, where the mediocre man's life ends. The genius remains an ever-flowing fountain of creative achievement until the very last breath he draws. — Walter Russell

When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost ... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre ... — H.L. Mencken

If you are a man of learning, read something classic, a history of the human struggle and don't settle for mediocre verse. — Rumi

Suppose Mozart had tried to be original? It would have been like a man at the North Pole trying to walk north, and this is true of all of the rest of us. Striving after originality takes you far away from your true self, and makes your work mediocre. — Keith Johnstone

Under the stress of the event, we felt, each man's true nature was revealed. The impression we had of each candidate's character was as direct and compelling as the color of the sky." He had had no trouble identifying which men would make good officers and which would not. "We were quite willing to declare, 'This one will never make it,' 'That fellow is rather mediocre,' or 'He will be a star.'" The problem came when he'd tested his predictions against the outcomes - how the various candidates had actually performed in officer training. His predictions were worthless. And yet, because it was the army and he had a job to do, he kept on making them; and because he was Danny, he noted that he still felt confident about them. — Michael Lewis

Disease, and most specially opprobrious, suppressed, secret disease, creates a certain critical opposition to the world, to mediocre life, disposes a man to be obstinate and ironical toward civil order, so that he seeks refuge in free thought, in books, in study. — Thomas Mann

When a man gets to middle age shouldn't he look for a peaceful and stable existence, find a not-too-demanding sort of a job, stay in a mediocre position, become a husband and a father, set up a comfortable home, put money in the bank and add to it every month so there'll be something for old age and a little left over for the next generation? — Gao Xingjian

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence. — Albert Einstein

It is not sufficient to live, there must be a destiny that does not have to wait for death. It is therefore
justifiable to say that man has an idea of a better world than this. But better does not mean different, it
means unified. This passion which lifts the mind above the commonplaces of a dispersed world, from
which it nevertheless cannot free itself, is the passion for unity. It does not result in mediocre efforts to
escape, however, but in the most obstinate demands. Religion or crime, every human endeavor in fact,
finally obeys this unreasonable desire and claims to give life a form it does not have. The same impulse,
which can lead to the adoration of the heavens or the destruction of man, also leads to creative literature,
which derives its serious content from this source. — Albert Camus

A mediocre man copying nature will never produce a work of art, because he really looks without seeing, and though he may have noted each detail minutely, the result will be flat and without character ... the artist on the contrary, sees; that is to say, his eye, grafted on his heart, reads deeply into the bosom of nature. — Auguste Rodin

Fate would never permit happiness to a man of such talent-
a content poet is a mediocre one, a happy poet is insufferable. — Rabih Alameddine

Effort is between you, and you, and nobody else. So that team that thinks it's ready to see you, they think what they've seen on film, they ain't saw what film shows, because every day is a new day. Every moment is a new moment. So now you've got to go out and show them that I'm a different creature now, than I was five minutes ago, cause I'm pissed off for greatness. Cause if you ain't pissed off for greatness, that just means you're okay with being mediocre, and ain't no man in here okay with just basic. — Ray Lewis

Nobody despises to lose more than I do. That's got me into trouble over the years, but it also made a man of mediocre ability into a pretty good coach. — Woody Hayes

A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug addict, or a disc jockey, or a crummy mediocre politician. A man can be a hero because he suffers and despairs; or because he thinks logically and analytically; or because he is sensitive; or because he is cruel. Wealth establishes a man as a hero, and so does poverty. Virtually any circumstance in a man's life will make him a hero to some group of people and has a mythic rendering in the culture
in literature, art, theater, or the daily newspapers. — Andrea Dworkin

The sinful nature of man is the same in every generation. Man naturally moves towards entropy. We are driven towards the carnal, mundane and the mediocre. We need a higher power, force and truth to deliver us from this entropic movement to self-destruction and pull us higher to greater values. — Sunday Adelaja

One of the greatest weaknesses of Chris Mitchell's editorship of the Australian is that he has allowed Greg Sheridan to remain his foreign editor throughout. Sheridan is a man who argued in different columns that George W. Bush was the Winston Churchill of our era; that unlike mediocre politicians like Barack Obama and John McCain, the "new star" of American politics, Sarah Palin, was able to combine "celebrity" with "character"; that President Obama's "anti-Israel hysteria" was leading his administration toward "licensing a mutant strain of anti-semitism"; and that the United States would most likely be strengthened by the crash of Wall Street in September 2008. — Robert Manne

Horace's best ode would not please a young woman as much as the mediocre verses of the young man she is in love with. — Michael Moore

A man of but mediocre talent who is furiously driven by deep desire will get somewhere. He who doesn't desire deeply isn't hurt much by failure. — Harvey Dunn

A man who aspires to rise above the mediocre, to be something more than the ordinary, surely deserves admiration, even if he fails and loses a fortune on account of his ambitions
( ... )
if one has failed only where others have not had the courage or will to try, there is consolation - indeed, deep satisfaction - to be gained from his observation when looking back over one's life.
#Page no.134 — Kazuo Ishiguro

Without a great man writing and directing for me, I realised I was a mediocre movie star at best. — Diane Keaton

The only thing
I tell you this straight from the heart
that disgusts me in Salzburg is that one can't have any proper social intercourse with those people
and that music does not have a better reputation ... For I assure you, without travel, at least for people from the arts and sciences, one is a miserable creature! ... A man of mediocre talents always remains mediocre, may he travel or not
but a man of superior talents, which I cannot deny myself to have without being blasphemous, becomes
bad, if he always stays in the same place. If the archbishop would trust me, I would soon make his music famous; that is surely true. — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

He was a mediocre man. He had led a mediocre life exceptional only in the magnitude of its unexceptionality. Now the world was mediocre, rendering him perfect. He asked himself: How can I die? I was always like this. Now I am more me. He had the ammo. He took them all down. — Colson Whitehead

Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he's honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he's great in the eyes of others. — Ayn Rand

In a certain sense, rebellion, with Nietzsche, ends again in the exaltation of evil. The difference is that evil is no longer a revenge. It is accepted as one of the possible aspects of good and, with rather more
conviction, as part of destiny. Thus he considers it as something to be avoided and also as a sort of
remedy. In Nietzsche's mind, the only problem was to see that the human spirit bowed proudly to the inevitable. We know, however, his posterity and what kind of politics were to claim the authorization of the man who claimed to be the last antipolitical German. He dreamed of tyrants who were artists. But tyranny comes more naturally than art to mediocre men. "Rather Cesare Borgia than Parsifal," he exclaimed. — Albert Camus

Throughout history, more has been lost to over-eager zealots than to mediocre slackers. A slacker leaves well enough alone. A zealot, a true patriot or company man, will keep pushing and pushing and pushing until the situation is screwed up beyond all recognition. If not properly motivated and constrained, a zealot is the most destructive force of all. — Patrick E. McLean

[I]t is necessary to insist upon this extraordinary but undeniable fact: experimental science has progressed thanks in great part to the work of men astoundingly mediocre, and even less than mediocre. That is to say, modern science, the root and symbol of our actual civilization, finds a place for the intellectually commonplace man and allows him to work therein with success. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

No serious-minded man should have time for the mediocre in any phase of his living. — James Cash Penney

Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three. Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was. — Joseph Heller

There is nothing scarier than a mediocre man with a mission. — Joel Achenbach

In 30 years Christians will have baptized their picture of Christ. He won't be a nice, banal, meek, and bearded man with softly permed hair. Instead, he will fill our imaginations more solidly, more invasively , more unexpectedly. Christ will become That Man who changes people, someone who jumps off a bumper sticker and mediocre praise songs and into lives. — Jonalyn Fincher

For I assure you, without travel, at least for people from the arts and sciences, one is a miserable creature! ... A man of mediocre talents always remains mediocre, may he travel or not - but a man of superior talents, which I cannot deny myself to have without being blasphemous, becomes - bad, if he always stays in the same place. — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

We rarely hear warnings about playing it safe. We don't see headlines that say, ... Man retires after a mediocre career and feels painful remorse for never having laid anything on the line. — Doug Sundheim

John Major is what he is: a man from nowhere, going nowhere, heading for a well-merited obscurity as fast as his mediocre talents can carry him. — Paul Johnson

There you have the difference between greatness and mediocrity. It's not an uncommon disease. But it's nice for a mediocre man to know that greatness must be the loneliest state in the world. — John Steinbeck

Only a mediocre man is always at his best, — Neil Peart

And isn't that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he's honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he's great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison. — Ayn Rand

We'll only really know we've succeeded when a mediocre woman does as well as a mediocre man. You shouldn't have to be extraordinary. That's the point! — Gloria Steinem

All Religions have this in common, that they are an outrage to common sense for they are pieced together out of a variety of elements, some of which seem so unworthy, sordid and at odds with man's reason, that any strong and vigorous intelligence laughs at them ... The human intellect is only capable of tackling mediocre subjects: it disdains petty subjects, and is startled by large ones. There is no reason to be surprised if it finds any religion hard to accept at first, for all are deficient in the mediocre and the commonplace, nor that it should require skill to induce belief. For the strong intellect laughs at religion, while the weak and superstitious mind marvels at it but is easily scandalized by it. — Pierre Charron

Memorizing Qur'an without studying it renders the text as a Talisman in the hands of its user; in Islam this is forbidden and is treated as a mark of Polytheism. Words convey contextual meanings to man, therefore, God's Word is only allowed to be treated as a Message; once touched by man, she/he is ordered to transport it into her/his mind and not only into her/his brain. That is why Symbols are a mediocre tool for conducting language because they paralyze the brain with their glyphs rather than excite the mind. — Ibrahim Ibrahim

What does it profit man if he allows a nonentity to make him look irrelevant just because he wants to indirectly have him become a life member of the nonentity club? No man can make you less valuable except you enter into agreement with such man. Not all birds with wings have the mastery of soaring high.... — Bayode Ojo

I'd like to get to the point where I can be just as mediocre as a man — Juanita M. Kreps

As a rule, the man who can do all things equally well is a very mediocre individual. — Elbert Hubbard

the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he's honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he's great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison. The — Ayn Rand

For this is how things are: the diminution and leveling of European man constitutes our greatest danger, for the sight of him makes us weary. - We can see nothing today that wants to grow greater, we suspect that things will continue to go down, down, to become thinner, more good-natured, more prudent, more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent, more Chinese, more Christian - there is no doubt that man is getting 'better' all the time. — Friedrich Nietzsche