#mediocrity

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

Often people that settle in life are those that only do what they can with what they have and where they are. Never settle for someone that didn't know your worth from the beginning or build a life without God in it. Live beyond your low expectations. ↗

— Shannon L. Alder

#purpose #settling #life

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

Creative Artists Agency put together a project of extraordinary mediocrity and colossal stupidity. Otherwise, it was great. ↗

— Mikhail Baryshnikov

#artists #colossal #creative #extraordinary #great

Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good. ↗

— George Will

#because #constitute #elite #fascinate #good

Being famous is not something that would make me feel successful - unless one was striving for mediocrity. ↗

— William Hurt

#being famous #famous #feel #make #me

The thing is, I don't believe in most of what's done. The amount of financial and imaginative energy that's put into mediocrity is just amazing which I find to be fundamentally offensive as a human being. ↗

— William Hurt

#amount #being #believe #done #energy

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous. ↗

— Robert Green Ingersoll

#genius #mediocrity #republic

Renouncement: the heroism of mediocrity. ↗

— Natalie Clifford Barney

#mediocrity