Mediocre People Quotes & Sayings

Most of you will probably never really discover anything. You may not contribute anything to the great equations that describe the universe to the world. But you will have the good fortune of encountering people of exceptional intelligence. People who are much smarter than you. Never get in their way, never group together in disgruntled circles and play games. Respect talent, real talent. Worship it. Clever people will always be disliked. Don't exploit that to crawl your way to the top. By the laws of probability most of you are mediocre. Accept it. The tragedy of mediocrity is that even mediocre people shake their heads and mull over how "standards are falling". So don't mull. Just know when you've to get out of the way. Most of you will be sideshows, extras in the grand unfolding of truth. That's all right. Once you accept that and let the best brains do their jobs, you will have done your service to science and mankind. — Manu Joseph

It was lonely to be so perfect in all respects. — Vann Chow

In the real world, very smart people fail and mediocre people rise. Part of what makes people fail or succeed are skills that have nothing to do with IQ. Also, the idea that intelligence can be gauged by an IQ test is erroneous. — Camille Paglia

Mediocrity is a pit that swallows people who have rested on seats of complacency for long. — Israelmore Ayivor

The world needs more dreamers, more peak performers, more people who aren't content settling for mediocre. It's time to stand up and create the future and life you love. — Michelle McCullough

Only mediocre people are at the best all the time. — W. Somerset Maugham

You can have a phenomenal technology with bad people; you're not gonna have much success. You can have mediocre technology with great people; they'll figure out a way to make a buck. — Kenneth Langone

Mediocrist (n.) A person of mediocre talents. Nobody wants to be mediocre, but someone has to be. In fact, by definition, most people are. Microphily — Ammon Shea

Technology is a bit of a double-edged sword. Used right, it's a wonderful tool, but unfortunately, it makes it easier for a lot of mediocre people to get really crappy ideas out. — Martin Gore

Do not go for conformity that breeds mediocrity! Choose instead to stand for transformation that does not only transforms lives, but true purpose and living as well. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Mediocre theoretical physicists make no progress. They spend all their time understanding other people's progress. — Jeff Bezos

Our culture doesn't seem to value competence as much as it used to. Now we seem to want to do and get everything as quickly as possible, which often leads to mediocre work and products. It seems to be the exception to find people at stores and businesses who are actually able to help us thoroughly with whatever problems we may have. We accept poor service and poor workmanship as if we deserve it
and when we decide to make a stand about something, it usually has to do with price or rudeness, but not about competence. — Tom Walsh

Superior people talk about ideas. Mediocre people talk about things. Little people talk about other people. — John Whitfield

Mediocre people find their way into positions of authority ... because when it comes to even the most important positions, our selection decisions are a good deal less rational than we think. — Malcolm Gladwell

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

You don't achieve greatness in life being surrounded by mediocre people with mediocre values. Choose your company wisely. — Amy Chan

Fantasy fiction is essentially about the concept of power; great fantasy fiction is about people who find it at great cost or lose it tragically; mediocre fantasy fiction is about people who have it and never lose it but simply wield it. — Stephen King

Some people insist that 'mediocre' is better than 'best.' They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none. — Robert A. Heinlein

I am a very mediocre intellect, at best, and I am smarter than most people I know - and that terrifies me. — Doug Stanhope

Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people. — Nick Saban

the apostles of mediocrity shall always stand to defend mediocrity out of mediocrity — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

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

Another piece of advice: I've learned over the years that everything is more or less the same amount of work. So you may as well set your sights high and try and do something really cool. There are other people around who can do the mediocre meat and potatoes work that anybody can do. So let them do that. You make the art that only you can make. You tell the stories only you can tell. — Neil Gaiman

We're called to speak to people to whom we often don't feel like speaking; to refrain from surrounding ourselves with people "just like us," whose thoughts, ideas, and actions we can more or less manage and control; to share not just with the poor, but with the rich, the mediocre, the irritating, the Republicans, the Democrats, because we never know who the poor are. We never know whose heart is hemorrhaging. We never know who needs a kind work, a smile, a helping hand. — Heather King

If community is for growth of the personal consciousness and freedom, and not just for the collective consciousness, with the security it brings, there will be times when some people find themselves in conflict with their community ...
This happens particularly when someone is called to personal growth and is in a group which has become lukewarm, mediocre and closed in on itself. The loneliness and anguish felt by this person can lead to a more intimate and mystical union with God. The person no longer finding support from the group cries out to God, "Let those who thirst come to me and drink," says Jesus. Those who suffer in this way find a new strength and love in the heart of God. Their communion with the father deepens.
The authenticity of their communion with God is shown as they continually try to love their brothers and sisters with greater fidelity, without judgment or condemnation. — Jean Vanier

Publishers, theatrical managers, and critics ask not for the quality inherent in creative art, but will it meet with a good sale, will it suit the palate of the people? Alas, this palate is like a dumping ground; it relishes anything that needs no mental mastication. As a result, the mediocre, the ordinary, the commonplace represents the chief literary output. — Emma Goldman

I was successful with mediocre material because of a good recording voice that people really liked at that time. — Nancy Sinatra

I've known people who have not mastered their tools who are good programmers, but not a tool master who remained a mediocre programmer. — Kent Beck

Why is it there's no aisle in a grocery or department in a store or menu on a website for "average stuff" or "beige products"? FACT: People never got passionate about mediocre and average. While consumers and clients can find "best deals" and "natural foods" and "artisan goods," one doesn't find an aisle or a website menu tab offering "average stuff" without excelling in something (which might explain that while vanilla is necessary for the ice cream sundae, it's the hot fudge we all crave and talk about). — David Brier

The world is mediocre. About that there is no mistake. Well then, has the world been mediocre since time immemorial? No. In the beginning, the world was chaos, and chaos is not mediocre. The mediocratization began when people separated the means of production from daily life. For when Karl Marx posited the proletariat, he thereby cemented their mediocrity. And precisely because of this, Stalinism forms a direct link with Marxism. I affirm Marx. He was one of those rare geniuses whose memory extended back to primal chaos. And by the same token, I have high regard for Dostoyevsky. Nonetheless, I do not hold with Marxism. It is far too mediocre. — Haruki Murakami

I was born into a world full of 'specialists'. I'm not sure whether it's the result of our education system or just natural entropy, but it's very uncommon to know a poet with even a mediocre knowledge about art, or an artist with a good taste in poetry, and so on and on. What this really is: lack of general education in a structural sense: god knows how many people I've met that are actually PROUD about proclaiming their ignorance about another field: it is as if it signifies their 'devotion to one path' while in reality they really only look like a buffoon if you ask me. New is that I am encountering 'Literary Critics' that proudly proclaim to 'never have read any foreign poetry' as if a 'movie critic' that only has watched Dutch films would be somehow capable of criticizing them in any true sense of the word. — Martijn Benders

I've never felt that I had to take a role in one of those mediocre but hugely budgeted romantic comedies because I want to wear beautiful dresses and have people think I'm pretty and that I get the guy. — Minnie Driver

Not being impressed by anyone or anything is one of the surest paths to a life of mediocrity. — Wayne Gerard Trotman

It's only in mediocre books that people are divided into two camps and have nothing to do with each other. In real life everything gets mixed up! Don't you think you'd have to be a hopeless nonentity to play only one role all your life, to have only one place in society, always to stand for the same thing? — Boris Pasternak

There is boring. There is sensational. There is mediocre. There is lazy. There is good. There is evil. People do implausible things all the time, and they run the gamut of moderately weird to truly extraordinary. But there is no normal. The world is an unbelievable place full of unbelievable people doing unbelievable things. — Penny Reid

If you want to be a poet, there is no greater mistake you could make than to publish whatever work you have as soon as you can. Why? Well because your debut is the only shot you have. It should be made of dynamite. There is nothing worse - believe me - than to have an oeuvre with a mediocre debut, and likely you wont get that far at all, and you will wait for reviews that wont come, just a horrible idea really. I don't need tell this to the rare and extreme talents - they are like a force of nature - but i am talking to the rest of you. People who love their youth don't make it easy on them - making it easy for them is a way to destroy them, But the representatives of my generation have no clue,or idea about Bildung at all, which is why I am at odds with most of them. — Martijn Benders

Too many companies - and individuals - are befuddled by delusion when it comes to identifying their authentic strengths and projecting those strengths through their brand. It's as if they live in Opposite Land. If their service is wretched, they tell people that they are great at service. If they are selling a mediocre car, they expound on its hip sportiness. Claiming that you are what you are not will obscure the strengths you do have while destroying your credibility. It's a lose-lose proposition. In order to hunt down and accurately tag authenticity, we must first pop the balloon of self-delusion. — Tom Hayes

Don't settle for poor performers. Keep in mind that one great person will always out-produce and out-perform two mediocre people. — John C. Maxwell

I think the more mediocre you are the better you do because people need to think you're their friend, they don't want to be threatened by you, you've got to be warm, you've got to be not too smart, not too pretty, not too anything. — Kelly Brook

Most companies, 97 percent or more, put all their focus on clever advertising and clever taglines to get people to buy average or mediocre products. You need to back off and offer a really good product or service. — Brian Tracy

There might be exceptions - and if so, you might rethink their employment - but few people really want to be mediocre. Most of your team members want to make a valued contribution - to find purpose in their work. — Stephen R. Covey

All people are standing; you got to standout! All people are breaking grounds; you got to breakthrough grounds! Don't settle for less; rise up and stand tall in what you do! — Israelmore Ayivor

Leadership is about doing the right thing, even if it going against a vast number of naysayers and mediocre people. — N. R. Narayana Murthy

It's become uncool to play other people's songs, and that's absurd. It has got to change. It's the reason why everything's so mediocre. — Steven Van Zandt

I was feeling everything much too much. Everything was pulling at my eyes. I spent hours floating in pools. I sat on terraces and stared for afternoons at mediocre views. I was feeling overjoyed for happy couples. I would see or hear about people, usually people I hardly knew or didn't even like, getting together, finding each other after so much groping, and I would feel bliss. I was blindsided by familiar things. — Dave Eggers

The Money River, where the wealth of the nation flows. We were born on the banks of it-and so were most of the mediocre people we grew up with, went to private schools with, sailed and played tennis with. We can slurp from that mighty river to our hearts' content. And we can even take slurping lessons, so we can slurp more efficiently. — Kurt Vonnegut

More generally, the financial benefits of self-employment are mediocre: given the same qualifications, people achieve higher average return by selling their skills to employers than by setting out on their own. The evidence suggests that optimism is widespread, stubborn, and costly. Psychologists have confirmed that most people genuinely believe they are superior to most others on most desirable traits - they are willing to bet small amounts of money on these beliefs in the laboratory. — Daniel Kahneman

Mediocre people have an answer for everything and are astonished at nothing. They always want to have the air of knowing better than you what you are going to tell them; when, in their turn, they begin to speak, they repeat to you with the greatest confidence, as if dealing with their own property, the things that they have heard you say yourself at some other place. A capable and superior look is the natural accompaniment of this type of character. — Eugene Delacroix

I've had a lot of sex in my life. I've had mediocre sex with someone I loved. I've had some pretty spectacular sex with people I didn't even know. I like to try new things, I like to push limits and I love to see a woman come undone. But in all my days, I have never had an experience that was so visually perfect. She is just absolute perfection. — Kerry Heavens

In fact, most of us see perseverance as a distinctly uncreative approach, the sort of strategy that people with mediocre ideas are forced to rely on. — Jonah Lehrer

There are days you live through; mediocre days that people may see as a waste or even boring. But they are each days that get you to the days you live for; the moments that you never forget. — Meghan Apriceno Carr

When superior people hear guidance, they carry it out diligently and ably. When mediocre people hear guidance, it seems vague and uncertain. When lesser people hear guidance, they laugh. — Lao-Tzu

Now, I normally do not like it when people sing near me, much less at me. I don't care if they're good, bad, or mediocre. It's all the same. Unless you're signed to a major label with music I can find on iTunes, I don't want to hear your live performance. It's why I can't watch American Idol. I keep worrying the contestants will mess up and be embarrassed, and then I'll be embarrassed for them. — Lauren Morrill

A good song to one person could just be something mediocre to somebody else. It's always strange thinking about how songs connect with people. — Lauren Mayberry

I want to make the world a more magickal place. To give magick a form that people appreciate, and that changes their lives. To create art that will make people want to forever reject the mundane and mediocre world they've been surrounded by — Damien Echols

People stop trying when there's no benefit for being exceptional and no consequence for being mediocre. — Frank Sonnenberg

The people with money were meddling in mechanical and design affairs. They were interjecting their mediocre ideas into the process and polluting it. — Robert Greene

The mystique and the false glamour of the writing profession grow partly out of a mistaken belief that people who can express profound ideas and emotions have ideas and emotions more profound than the rest of us. It isn't so. The ability to express is a special gift with a special craft to support it and is spread fairly equally among the profound, the shallow, and the mediocre. — Janet Burroway

I wish that one would be persuaded that psychological experiments, especially those on the complex functions, are not improved [by large studies]; the statistical method gives only mediocre results; some recent examples demonstrate that. The American authors, who love to do things big, often publish experiments that have been conducted on hundreds and thousands of people; they instinctively obey the prejudice that the persuasiveness of a work is proportional to the number of observations. This is only an illusion. — Alfred Binet

The world of politics is basically of the instinctive level. It belongs to the law of the jungle: might is right. And the people who get interested in politics are the most mediocre. Politics needs no other qualifications except one - that is, a deep feeling of inferiority. — Osho

My girl, there are three kinds of people in the world: the outstanding, the mediocre, and the truly hopeless. — Kathleen O'Neal Gear

High achievers tend to have major weaknesses. People without major weaknesses tend to be mediocre. — Guy Kawasaki

I didn't say I didn't like you. 'Like' is such a puerile word. Mediocre people like things. The only question of any significant emotive content is: Can you live without it? — Karen Marie Moning

Creative people are often found either disagreeable or intimidating by mediocrities. — Criss Jami

The adjuration to be "normal" seems shockingly repellent to me; I see neither hope nor comfort in sinking to that low level. I think it is ignorance that makes people think of abnormality only with horror and allows them to remain undismayed at the proximity of "normal" to average and mediocre. For surely anyone who achieves anything is, essentially, abnormal. — Karl A. Menninger

Well, I think the secret is if you have a lot of stocks, some will do mediocre, some will do okay, and if one of two of 'em go up big time, you produce a fabulous result. And I think that's the promise to some people. — Peter Lynch

People can generally be classified into two groups: the mediocre realists and the mediocre dreamers. You clearly belong to the latter. Your fate is and will always be the fate of a dreamer. — Haruki Murakami

Confidence is the prize given to the mediocre — Robert Hughes

Making mistakes is the privilege of the active. It is always the mediocre people who are negative, who spend their time proving that they were not wrong. — Ingvar Kamprad

One wouldn't want to say that what makes a good writer is the number of books that the writer wrote because you could write a whole number of bad books. Books that don't work, mediocre books, or there's a whole bunch of people in the pulp tradition who have done that. They just wrote ... and actually they didn't write a whole bunch of books, they just wrote one book many times. — Walter Mosley

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

Most people who are deemed 'mean' are usually perfectionist who make mediocre people unhappy, cause they put more pressure on them then they can handle. — Lee Clow

Dear young people, let us not be satisfied with a mediocre life. Be amazed by what is true and beautiful, what is of God! — Pope Francis

I would rather read a mediocre book than waste time sitting around with people making small talk. — James D. Sass

Birds that cannot fly high into the sky rejoice exceedingly and sing sweet melodies when they get to the top of the tallest tree on the highest mountain! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

There are challenges and opposition, everywhere! But we will fight the fight of faith! — Lailah Gifty Akita

Now people can generally be classified into two groups: the mediocre realists and the mediocre dreamers. — Haruki Murakami

For the serious mediocre writer convention makes him sound like a lot of other people; for the popular writer it gives him a formula he can exploit; for the serious good writer it releases his experiences or emotions from himself and incorporates them into literature, where they belong. — Northrop Frye

Young people need plenty of difficulties to achieve something ... If you receive a little money for this, a little money for that, everything becomes mediocre, and collapses ignominiously. — Salvador Dali

There are lots of ways to make money in venture capital, and there are even more ways to be mediocre. The industry has too much money and too many smart people chasing too few great entrepreneurs. — Dan Levitan

I believe that creativity is a product of intelligence. I don't believe that creative work can be produced by fools, dullards, or mediocre people, except in the rarest of accidents. Creativity is a product of desire, thought, experience, experimentation and inner conviction. Taken together, these five qualities imply intelligence and commitment. — Bruce Barnbaum

Dear Young People, do not be mediocre; the Christian life challenges us with great ideals! — Pope Francis

There are more pompous, arrogant, self-centered, mediocre-type people running corporate America who should be sent out on some postal route delivering mail. — Joe Jamail

Teachers loved to say people had potential; that's what teachers did to keep themselves from getting canned. What were they supposed to say-I'm sorry, your kid has no promise whatsoever? She's utterly mediocre in every way? — Anne Ursu

The tragedy of mediocrity is that even mediocre people shake their heads and mull over how standard are falling.
- Serious Men — Manu Joseph

Some people are known, they have the platform and presence, but still remain irrelevant. They know you and what you do, but they don't need you or your offering. I see too many people with a platform but without substance, again this is not sustainable. Lack of substance can only relegate your talent or skill towards the league of the mediocre, if at all you become much by superficial branding then you will become the best of the worst. You don't have what it takes but you depend on your ability to sell substandard offerings to the market. It will not last for long, but quickly become irrelevant. — Archibald Marwizi

The temptation many creative people I know have is to strive for popularity. To make, do, and say things that other people like in the hopes of pleasing them. This motivation is nice. And sometimes the end result is good. But often what happens in trying so hard to please other people, especially many other people, the result is mediocre. — Scott Berkun

The essence of business to me is great people run great companies. Mediocre people don't do a very good job. — Kenneth Langone

It's a big world. A lot of people are worth loving. Why love someone mediocre? — Akhil Sharma

Establishing and maintaining clarity for yourself and what you want is the starting point for success. Thus, maintaining extraordinary clarity is necessary to achieve extraordinary success. The problem is that most people maintain a mediocre level of clarity, which inevitably leads to a mediocre level of success. — Hal Elrod

Sometimes, when you work with mediocre talents, they feel entitled. They act like stars. Genuinely talented people don't. — Barbra Streisand

Most child welfare agencies tend to embrace secrecy because the people who lead them tend to be mediocre and don't want you to see how poor a job they are doing. — Richard Wexler

If we [Microsoft Corporation] weren't still hiring great people and pushing ahead at full speed, it would be easy to fall behind and become a mediocre company. Fear should guide you, but it should be latent. I have some latent fear. I consider failure on a regular basis. — Bill Gates

I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president - which means, in our time, a dangerous president - unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction. — Howard Zinn

Christians, who do not know the purpose of their salvation, are actually just mediocre people — Sunday Adelaja

Mediocre people often have a tinge of religion about them, but it is only a tinge. They take their religion as it comes. They may pray and worship more or less regularly, and they usually stay clear of publicly disgraceful crimes, but they are lukewarm, colorless. Seldom or never do they read a serious book about prayer or study to learn more about God and His plans, to discover how to be humble and chaste and patient. They are always too busy for the one thing necessary. — Thomas Dubay

When we pick up the newspaper at breakfast, we expect - we even demand - that it brings us momentous events since the night before ... We expect our two-week vacations to be romantic, exotic, cheap, and effortless..We expect anything and everything. We expect the contradictory and the impossible. We expect compact cars which are spacious; luxurious cars which are economical. We expect to be rich and charitable, powerful and merciful, active and reflective, kind and competitive. We expect to be inspired by mediocre appeals for excellence, to be made literate by illiterate appeals for literacy ... to go to 'a church of our choice' and yet feel its guiding power over us, to revere God and to be God. Never have people been more the masters of their environment. Yet never has a people felt more deceived and disappointed. For never has a people expected so much more than the world could offer. — Daniel J. Boorstin

The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and the vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. Loving makes love. Loving makes itself. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love. Wouldn't that be the way to make love stay? — Tom Robbins

When one 'RETARDS' his or her 'intelligence,it is called 'MEDIOCRITY'. Most people can exploit her MEDIOCRE person,but it is very difficult to EXPLOIT an intelligent person! Every VESTED interest prefers mediocrity, and shuns intelligence. INTELLIGENCE is however, relative..If you can manage to STAND UP for what is RIGHT, that should suffice to begin with! — Abha Maryada Banerjee

Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go so much further than people with vastly superior talent.
— Sophia Loren