Mediocrities Quotes & Sayings

There are no such men today. We have created a mechanism that makes it practically impossible for a real genius to appear. In my own field the biochemist Fritz Lipmann or the much maligned Linus Pauling were very talented people. But generally, geniuses everywhere seem to have died out by 1914. Today, most are mediocrities blown up by the winds of the time. — Erwin Chargaff

There are as many mediocrities exalted through pity as masters decried through envy. — Honore De Balzac

I walked back to the window to look down at the people who shared this city with me. The people who made every day a series of mediocrities.

The unreformed murderers masquerading as businessmen in borrowed suits and debt-laden cars. The voluptuous bimbos floating around in an inexplicable mix of vacuity and despair.

The crumbling face of my building looked pretty enough from across the street, but from here I could see how worn it was. I peeled off a satisfying chunk of paint, cement and matter. And I let it fall to the street below. — Nasri Atallah

Because advertising and marketing is an art, the solution to each new problem or challenge should begin with a blank canvas and an open mind, not with the nervous borrowings of other people's mediocrities. That's precisely what 'trends' are - a search for something 'safe' - and why a reliance on them leads to oblivion. — George Lois

Ever since the days when such formidable mediocrities as Galsworthy, Dreiser, Tagore, Maxim Gorky, Romain Rolland and Thomas Mann were being accepted as geniuses, I have been perplexed and amused by fabricated notions about so-called "great books." That, for instance, Mann's asinine "Death in Venice," or Pasternak's melodramatic, vilely written "Dr. Zhivago," or Faulkner's corn-cobby chronicles can be considered "masterpieces" or at least what journalists term "great books," is to me the sort of absurd delusion as when a hypnotized person makes love to a chair. My greatest masterpieces of twentieth century prose are, in this order: Joyce's "Ulysses"; Kafka's "Transformation"; Bely's "St. Petersburg," and the first half of Proust's fairy tale, "In Search of Lost Time. — Vladimir Nabokov

You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government. — Guy De Maupassant

Forget the fountain of youth, pal of mine. You can live to be a thousand, and it won't matter. Mediocrities like you deserve immortality. — Gary Shteyngart

It's always the same: mediocrities are over-valued and great men are rejected. — Anton Webern

Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish for a better kind of man, a loss of appetite for mediocrities. — William James

Most men - it is my experience - are neither virtuous nor scoundrels, good-hearted nor bad-hearted. They are a little of one thing and a little of the other and nothing for any length of time: ignoble mediocrities. — Robert Graves

The appearance of a single great genius is more than equivalent to the birth of a hundred mediocrities. — Cesare Lombroso

Our democratic dogma has leveled not only all voters but all leaders; we delight to show that living geniuses are only mediocrities, and that dead ones are myths. If — Will Durant

You know, larger than life is always better than smaller than life in politicians. And, you know, God save us from mediocrities. — Joe Klein

The gods destroy the heroes with a sudden blow, but they grind us mediocrities for weary, weary years. — Robertson Davies

Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own - they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal - for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire. — Ayn Rand

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was. — Thomas Carlyle

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

Gregariousness is always the refuge of mediocrities, whether they swear by Soloviev or Kant or Marx. Only individuals seek the truth, and they shun those whose sole concern is not the truth. — Boris Pasternak

Purging trial, fidelities through storm, perseverance through mediocrities, and pursuit of Divine destiny through the allurements of earth. — Fulton J. Sheen

Regulators are power-lusting mediocrities. — Yaron Brook

Intellectuals range through the finest gradations of kind and quality: from those who are merely educated neurotics, usually with strong hidden reactionary tendencies, through mediocrities of all kinds, to men of real brains and sensibility, more or less stiffened into various respectabilities or substitutes for respectability. The number of Ignorant Specialists is large. The number of hysterics and compulsives is also large. — Louise Bogan

But the secret of intellectual excellence is the spirit of criticism ; it is intellectual independence. And this leads to difficulties which must prove insurmountable for any kind of authoritarianism. The authoritarian will in general select those who obey, who believe, who respond to his influence. But in doing so, he is bound to select mediocrities. For he excludes those who revolt, who doubt, who dare to resist his influence. Never can an authority admit that the intellectually courageous, i.e. those who dare to defy his authority, may be the most valuable type. Of course, the authorities will always remain convinced of their ability to detect initiative. But what they mean by this is only a quick grasp of their intentions, and they will remain for ever incapable of seeing the difference. — Karl Popper

Indifference is the revenge the world takes on mediocrities. — Oscar Wilde

Mean-spirited mediocrities, especially those with a smattering of learning, are the most likely to be opinionated. Only strong minds know how to correct their opinions and abandon a bad position. — Madeleine De Souvre, Marquise De ...

Public Opinion, this invisible, intangible, omnipresent, despotic tyrant; this thousand-headed Hydra - the more dangerous for being composed of individual mediocrities ... — H. P. Blavatsky

Only mediocrities rise to the top in a system that won't tolerate wave making. — Laurence J. Peter

I admit that I myself am far from having a complete command of every topic I touch on, but my knowledge of my subject is always greater than the interest or the understanding of my auditors. You see, there is one very good thing about mankind; the mediocre masses make very few demands of the mediocrities of a higher order, submitting stupidly and cheerfully to their guidance — Alfred De Vigny

Great innovators and original thinkers and artists attract the wrath of mediocrities as lightning rods draw the flashes. — Theodor Reik

In this life, we are not garments which may be washed and worn again, Karris. We are candles, giving light and heat until we are consumed. You burned more brightly than most. It has a cost. Mediocrities like me? Dim flames burn longer. — Brent Weeks

Innovation is a twofold threat to academic mediocrities: it endangers their oracular authority, and it evokes the deeper fear that their whole, laboriously constructed intellectual edifice might collapse. — Arthur Koestler

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities. — Oscar Wilde

Only mediocrities progress. An artist revolves in a cycle of masterpieces, the first of which is no less perfect than the last. — Oscar Wilde

Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It's like passing around samples of sputum. — Vladimir Nabokov

All technical refinements discourage me. Perfect photography, larger screens, hi-fi sound, all make it possible for mediocrities slavishly to reproduce nature; and this reproduction bores me. What interests me is the interpretation of life by an artist. The personality of the film maker interests me more than the copy of an object. — Jean Renoir

To do science today is to experience a dimension unique in contemporary working lives; the work promises something incomparable: the sense of living both personally and historically. That is why science now draws to itself all kinds of people - charlatans, mediocrities, geniuses - everyone who wants to touch the flame, feel alive to the time. — Vivian Gornick

What can it matter to me,' he says, 'whether people read my books or not? It may matter to (the critics)
but I have too much money to want more, and if the books have any stuff in them it will work by and by. I do not know nor greatly care whether they are good or not. What opinion can any sane man form about his own work? Some people must write stupid books just as there must be junior ops and third-class poll men. Why should I complain of being among the mediocrities? If a man is not absolutely below mediocrity let him be thankful
besides, the books will have to stand by themselves some day, so the sooner they begin the better. — Samuel Butler

I have worked on very good movies that have been buried, and I've worked on some resounding mediocrities that have been paraded through the marketplace like they were masterpieces. — Tommy Lee Jones

One of those middle-aged mediocrities so common in London clubs who have no enemies, but are thoroughly disliked by their friends; — Oscar Wilde

Mediocrities can tolerate being surrounded only by flatterers who conceal their mediocrity. — Maurice Druon

It is in the nature of democracies, perhaps, that while visionaries are sometimes necessary to make them, once made they can be managed by mediocrities. — Ramachandra Guha

I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint. — Peter Shaffer

In a novel, the author gives the leading character intelligence and distinction. Fate goes to less trouble: mediocrities play a part in great events simply from happening to be there. — Charles Maurice De Talleyrand