#mediocrity

We have no Arab intellectuals of international stature because we live in a state of generalized mediocrity. We are suspended in the pit without touching the bottom. ↗

— Tahar Ben Jelloun

#because #bottom #generalized #intellectuals #international

We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself. ↗

— Charles Lamb

#am #another #being #encourage #excellent

Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land. ↗

— Herman Melville

#any #before #best #children #even

I have a horror of not rising above mediocrity. ↗

— Robert Baldwin

#horror #i #mediocrity #rising

Only the mediocre artist is always at his best. ↗

— Victor J. Banis

#artist #excellence #mediocrity #writer #writing

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

Apathetic people sit back and wait for things to get better before they move. Radical people make things get better by how they move. ↗

— Shannon L. Alder

#apathy #inspiration #mediocrity #passiveness #success

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

It's a disease. Nobody thinks or feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God damn mediocrity. ↗

— Richard Yates

#mediocrity #comfort