#mediocrity

Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity. ↗

— Robert Louis Stevenson

#attempts #conceived #console #discourage #generally

Good behavior is the last refuge of mediocrity. ↗

— Henry S. Haskins

#good #good behavior #last #mediocrity #refuge

The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind. ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#ascendant #general #mankind #mediocrity #power

Any corporate policy and plan which is typical of the industry is doomed to mediocrity. Where this is not so, it should be possible to demonstrate that all other competitors are at a distinct disadvantage. ↗

— Bruce Henderson

#competitors #corporate #demonstrate #disadvantage #distinct

my academic career was indifferent to the point of beauty- I was so unremarkable, in every way, that the unvarying precision of my mediocrity achieves a kind of loveliness ↗

— Mil Millington

#humor #mediocrity #beauty

People don't want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort of instinct, they feel that they ought to and it makes them feel guilty. So they'll bless and follow anyone who gives them a justification for not thinking. Anyone who makes a virtue - a highly intellectual virtue - out of what they know to be their sin, their weakness and their guilt... They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear ↗

— Ayn Rand

#greatness #mediocrity #dreams

However, Nick acted as much as possible under the circumstances, and that was rectifying — it brought with it enjoyment and a working faith. He had not gone counter to the axiom that in a case of doubt one was to hold off; for that applied to choice, and he had not at present the slightest pretension to choosing. He knew he was lifted along, that what he was doing was not first-rate, that nothing was settled by it and that if there was essentially a problem in his life it would only grow tougher with keeping. But if doing one's sum to-morrow instead of to-day does not make the sum easier it at least makes to-day so. ↗

— Henry James

#muddling-through #procrastination #faith

All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy. ↗

— Scott Alexander

#cheating #dying #easy #evil #good

Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius. ↗

— Fulton J. Sheen

#genius #mediocrity #pays #tribute

We like to stress the commonness of heroes. Essences seem undemocratic. We feel oppressed by the call to greatness. We regard an interest in glory or perfection as a sign of mental unhealthiness, and have decided that high achievers, who are called overachievers, owe their surplus ambition to a defect in mothering (either too little or too much). We want to admire but think we have a right not to be intimidated. We dislike feeling inferior to an ideal. So away with ideals, with essences. The only ideals allowed are healthy ones -- those everyone may aspire to, or comfortably imagine oneself possessing. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#ambition #democracy #egalitarianism #equality #essence