Why Be Mediocre Quotes & Sayings

Leaders don't fall in love with mediocrity. The status quo isn't their desire to maintain but to improve. — Israelmore Ayivor

What is the role of intellectuals in Europe? There's this debate in which all speakers do not appear to me to even be intellectuals. Why is Martin Sommers an intellectual? It is a political journalist who writes mediocre pieces. If that is sufficient to call yourself a 'European intellectual then the question of the debate has already become rhetorical. — Martijn Benders

Why?" I say, so quietly that it comes out sounding like a tiny, tired sigh.
"Nobody wants to be mediocre." Her shadow on the ceiling is monstrous, a witch in profile. — Brenna Yovanoff

There is plenty of misery in the world, all right, but there is ample pleasure, as well. If a person forswears pleasure in order to avoid misery, what has he gained? ... how can you admire a human who consciously embraces the bland, the mediocre, and the safe rather than risk the suffering that disappointments can bring? ... If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desire ... why not get better at fulfilling desire? I cannot believe that the most delicious things were placed here merely to test us, to tempt us, to make it the more difficult for us to achieve the grand prize - they safety of the void. To fashion of life such a petty game is unworthy of both men and gods. — Tom Robbins

I don't think there is any such thing as a song that is completely great or good. A lot of songs becomes massive hits that are just mediocre, and other times there are incredible songs that never get anywhere and you always wonder why. — Darren Fletcher

Every writer on this planet THINKS he is a great writer (why waste your entire life writing when you believe you are mediocre?) but its deemed socially unacceptable to actually speak out such thoughts. So, modesty is always a public concept and not an inner one. For that reason alone 'modesty' can actually be said to be the product of a large ego, for the ego is primarily concerned with survival and society rewards this dishonesty and tends to punish honesty (see Camus) — Martijn Benders

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. — Albert Einstein

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

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

We all have a vast number of areas in which we have no talent or skill and little chance of becoming even mediocre. In those areas a knowledge workers should not take on work, jobs and assignments. It takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence. — Peter F. Drucker

found myself working hard for mediocre pay and mediocre rewards, doing mediocre work that bored me but that I felt I shouldn't complain about. — Johnny B. Truant

Ninety percent of films are pretty mediocre, but they have a built-in audience and open on 3,000 screens. — George Clooney

A mediocre music teacher tells. A good music teacher explains. A superior music teacher demonstrates. A great music teacher inspires. — William Arthur Ward

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

You can't test great advertising. You can only test the mediocre. Not that I don't care about demographics. You have to understand who you're going after. — George Lois

Too often, we put up with mediocrity, telling ourselves that later in life we'll do what we want. — Daniel Willey

Superior poets say what they really feel. Mediocre poets say what they decide to feel. Inferior poets say what they think they should feel. — Alvaro De Campos

Why is true success so relatively effortless? It might be likened to the magnetic field created by an electric current running through a wire. The higher the power of the current, the greater the magnetic field that it generates. And the magnetic field itself then influences everything in its presence. There are very few at the top. The world of the mediocre, however, is one of intense competition, and the bottom of the pyramid is crowded. Charismatic winners are sought out; losers have to strive to be accepted. People who are loving, kind, and thoughtful of others have more friends than they can count; success in every area of life is a reflex to those who are aligned with successful patterns. And the capacity to be able to discern the difference between the strong patterns of success and the weak patterns leading to failure is now available to each of us. — David R. Hawkins

I would rather write or record something great and have it overlooked than do mediocre work and have it be popular. — Patti Smith

To vest a few fallible men - prosecutors, judges, jurors - with vast powers of literary or artistic censorship, to convert them into what J.S. Mill called the "moral police" is to make them despotic arbiters of literary products ... If one day they ban mediocre books as obscene, another day they may do otherwise to a work of a genius. Originality, not too plentiful, should be cherished, not stifled. An author's imagination may be cramped if he must write with an eye on prosecutors or juries ... — Jerome Frank

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

In the contest between talent and hard work as to which is the more important element of success, there's no comparison. A mediocre talent with lots of hard work will go further than a stellar talent who coasts. — David Joyner

I have played 50 different kinds of fathers and villains. Only mediocre actors play the part the same way. — Anupam Kher

The reason why you know more funny dudes than funny chicks is that dudes are funnier than chicks. If my daughter has a mediocre sense of humor, I'm just gonna tell her, 'Be a staff writer for a sitcom. Because they'll have to hire you, they can't really fire you, and you don't have to produce that much. It'll be awesome.' — Adam Carolla

Television is such a mediocre medium. — Elizabeth Montgomery

In general, however, grand opera, by more and more deadening our musical receptivity through its three-hours duration and at the same time putting our patience to the test through the snail's pace of what is usually a very trite action, is in itself intrinsically and essentially boring; which failing can be overcome only by the excessive excellence of an individual achievement: that is why in this genre only the masterpieces are enjoyable and everything mediocre is unendurable. — Arthur Schopenhauer

That's why I'm a proponent of collaboration. It's not because working together feels good. If it felt good and the results were mediocre, then collaboration wouldn't be worth the effort. Collaboration is valuable because it helps us transcend our individual limits and create something greater than ourselves. — Bob Sullo

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

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

It can be said unequivocally that good teaching is far more complex, difficult, and demanding than mediocre research, which may explain why professors try so hard to avoid it. — Page Smith

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

Why is this mediocre? We love to point out how broken our systems are. We enjoy getting angry at hotels or government agencies or airlines that are so obviously doing a poor job. Idiots! But we almost never look at merely mediocre products and wonder why they aren't great. Mediocre services or products do what they're supposed to, but have set the bar so low that it's hardly worth the energy to cross the street to buy them. A resolute generic sameness pervades this mediocrity. Why isn't every restaurant meal a fabulous buy for the money? Why isn't every tax dollar spent with the intensity and focus it could be spent with? It seems as though we are willing to accept mediocre as long as the product, the service, or the organization isn't totally broken. — Seth Godin

I took the LSAT. My score was decent. I had a plan that if my score was really well, then I might of just went to Yale or Harvard ... But it was just mediocre. I can get into law school. — Vinny Guadagnino

I've played every instrument you could possibly think of for 10 minutes. So I'm mediocre at everything. I can play drums, guitar, piano, violin, saxophone, clarinet, flute ... Just not well. — Kat Dennings

Philadelphians are every whit as mediocre as their neighbors, but they seldom encourage each other in mediocrity by giving it a more agreeable name. — Agnes Repplier

I don't want to be mediocre, this is the fear of my soul and my body. — Mircea Eliade

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

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

You know, that is one of the consequences of the weak sense of responsibility of the press. The press does not feel responsibility for its judgments. It makes judgments and attaches labels with the greatest of ease. Mediocre journalists simply make headlines of their conclusions, which suddenly become generally accepted. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

This is a place that was "discovered" by a dude who didn't know how to read a map, so he just showed up on some shore, thought he was in India, and then proceeded to plant a flag there, like, "TA-DA." No, sir, no. What Christopher Columbus's goofass needed was a compass and a clue for being so aggressively mediocre, but that dude has a federal holiday in his honor. He showed up on someone else's property and claimed it as his because he didn't know what it was. This country started off all the way wrong and continued in the same fashion. Chris — Luvvie Ajayi

There is never a bad time to start a business - unless you want to start a mediocre one. — Gary Vaynerchuk

When something is just bad, it's often because it is too mediocre in its ambition. The artist hasn't attempted to do anything really outlandish. — Susan Sontag

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

A mathematician of the first rank, Laplace quickly revealed himself as only a mediocre administrator; from his first work we saw that we had been deceived. Laplace saw no question from its true point of view; he sought subtleties everywhere; had only doubtful ideas, and finally carried the spirit of the infinitely small into administration. — Napoleon Bonaparte

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

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

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

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

Mediocre art is far worse than bad art. Bad art does not waste our time. — Don Paterson

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 is good and mediocre writing within every genre. — Margaret Atwood

It's hard to build community around mediocre and mundane writing. — Guy Kawasaki

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

There are many mediocre entertainers who don't aspire to much more than fame and glory. It's very easy to have them as your role models because there aren't as many greats. Go back, discover the greats, and take it from there. — Carmen Ejogo

If you have a great band with a mediocre drummer, you have a mediocre band. If you have a mediocre band with a great drummer, you have a great band! — Duke Ellington

My record at the University of California as an undergraduate was mediocre to say the best. — Douglass North