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.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–96) American Abolitionist, Author
There are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public eloquence. What torture it is to hear a frigid speech being pompously declaimed, or second-rate verse spoken with all a bad poet’s bombast!
—Jean de La Bruyere (1645–96) French Satiric Moralist, Author
We meet with few utterly dull and stupid souls; the sublime and transcendent are still fewer; the generality of mankind stand between these two extremes; the interval is filled with multitudes of ordinary geniuses, but all very useful, the ornaments and supports of the commonwealth: these produce the agreeable and the profitable, and are conversant in commerce, finances, war, navigation, arts, trades, society, and conversation.
—Jean de La Bruyere (1645–96) French Satiric Moralist, Author
Take back the beauty and wit you bestow upon me; leave me my own mediocrity of agreeableness and genius, but leave me also my sincerity, my constancy, and my plain dealing; ’tis all I have to recommend me to the esteem either of others or myself.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) English Aristocrat, Poet, Novelist, Writer
Little things affect little minds.
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81) British Head of State
‘Good enough’ stopped being good enough a long time ago. so why not be great?
—Seth Godin (b.1960) American Entrepreneur
The art of putting into play mediocre qualities often begets more reputation than is achieved by true merit.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613–80) French Writer
Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve its dignity.
—Charles G. Dawes (1865–1951) American Diplomat, Politician
The status quo is leaving the building, and quickly.
—Seth Godin (b.1960) American Entrepreneur
Successful people are the ones who are breaking the rules.
—Seth Godin (b.1960) American Entrepreneur
The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.
—John Stuart Mill (1806–73) English Philosopher, Economist
There is a mean in everything.—Even virtue itself hath its stated limits, which, not being strictly observed, it ceases to be virtue.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65–8 BCE) Roman Poet
Mediocrity can talk; but it is for genius to observe.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
Mediocrity is not allowed to poets, either by the gods or men.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65–8 BCE) Roman Poet
The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but walking orderly; its grandeur does not exercise itself in grandeur, but in mediocrity.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
Persevering mediocrity is much more respectable, and unspeakably more useful, than talented inconstancy.
—James Hamilton (1814–67) Scottish Protestant Minister
The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
You can raise the bar or you can wait for others to raise it, but it’s getting raised regardless.
—Seth Godin (b.1960) American Entrepreneur
There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.
—Peter Drucker (1909–2005) Austrian-born Management Consultant
They are good furniture pictures, unworthy of praise, and undeserving of blame.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
You don’t have to settle. It’s a choice you get to make every day.
—Seth Godin (b.1960) American Entrepreneur
Only the mediocre are always at their best.
—Jean Giraudoux (1882–1944) French Novelist, Playwright, Essayist
A man trying to sell a blind horse always praises its feet.
—German Proverb
The real antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
—Eric Hoffer (1902–83) American Philosopher, Author
There are circumstances of peculiar difficulty and danger, where a mediocrity of talent is the most fatal quality that a man can possibly possess. Had Charles the First, and Louis the Sixteenth, been more wise or more weak, more firm or more yielding, in either case they had both of them saved their heads.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
It’s uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle.
—Seth Godin (b.1960) American Entrepreneur
In our desire to please everyone, it’s very easy to end up being invisible or mediocre.
—Seth Godin (b.1960) American Entrepreneur
The best pedigree in the world won’t sell a lame race horse.
—Unknown
It is mediocrity which makes laws and sets mantraps and spring-guns in the realm of free song, saying thus far shalt thou go and no further.
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic
Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best.
—Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) British Essayist, Caricaturist, Novelist