A Quote by Robert Hughes

Confidence is the prize given to the mediocre

Robert Hughes

Quote Topics

Confidence Given Mediocre Prize

Quote Author

Robert Hughes
Australian - Critic
July 28, 1938 - August 6, 2012

As a Nobel Prize winner I cannot but regret that the award was never given to Mark Twain, nor to Henry James, speaking only of my own countrymen. Greater writers than these also did not receive the prize. I would have been happy - happier - today if the prize had been given to that beautiful writer Isak Dinesen.

Ernest Hemingway

We are given in our newspapers and on TV and radio exactly what we, the public, insist on having, and this very frequently is mediocre information and mediocre entertainment.

Eleanor Roosevelt

In December 1989, my mother died very suddenly, and that sparked a re-evaluation of what I was doing, and I realized I was mediocre at everything. I was a mediocre IBM employee, I was a mediocre entrepreneur, I was a mediocre artist. I decided that, although my mom wouldn't be around to see it, I wanted to be great at something.

Jim McKelvey

I was absolutely convinced that I wouldn't win the Nobel Prize. My impression was that the Nobel Prize in Literature was given to people more or less affiliated with, let's say, socialist ideas, and that was not my case.

Mario Vargas Llosa

There's mediocre jazz, mediocre salesmen, mediocre golfers. If you want to be good, you have to really hone your skills.

Jason Moran

As you all know first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.

David Mamet

Ernest Rutherford's 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry wasn't given for the nuclear power station - he wouldn't have survived that long - it was given for showing how interesting atomic physics could be.

Andre Geim

I'm not interested in awards. I never have been. I don't think they are important. Don't get me wrong, if somebody gives me a prize, I thank them as gratefully as I know how, because it's very nice to be given a prize. But I don't think that awards ought to be sought.

John Hurt

Confidence was the backbone of my upbringing. I was an only child, so I was spoilt, loved, and given an enormous amount of confidence by my parents.

Miriam Margolyes

One of the things that I feel very blessed about is that I was given a fair amount of confidence as a young person and I constantly meet young people, even today, maybe even more today, when it is clearly not a given that they will have a reasonable amount of confidence.

Cressida Dick

The Nobel prize is unquestionably the most famous prize in the world, and very often, the prize is an object of prestige not only for a person but also for a research center, a country, or for a particular area of interest.

Klaus von Klitzing

Luck is a tag given by the mediocre to account for the accomplishments of genius.

Robert A. Heinlein

I won't lie, I didn't know there was a concert. I've always known about the Nobel Peace Prize and the different prizes given out for science and this and that, but I didn't know there was a concert the day after. When they said, 'You're going to perform in Norway for the Nobel Peace Prize concert,' I was like, 'All right, I'm there.'

Luis Fonsi

I feel like confidence is something that ebbs and flows. I was given a lot of love and attention from my family growing up, so for sure I had a natural confidence.