Top 1200 Mediocre Minds Quotes & Sayings

Terrific minds focus on tips; average minds go over activities; little minds talk about people today.

Hung-up women can't produce anything but mediocre art, and there ain't no room for mediocre art.

We'll only really know we've succeeded when a mediocre woman does as well as a mediocre man. You shouldn't have to be extraordinary. That's the point!

I've always been a mediocre student, so I never won an award in school. I'm not very athletic, so I've never won a sports award. So, I'm a mediocre person.

I was making sure everyone knew Crabtree was a mediocre receiver. And when you try the best corner in the game with a mediocre receiver, that's what happens. I appreciate that he knows that now.

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

Why should I hold back now and sound mediocre, just so I can sound mediocre twenty years from now?

That's one of the compensations for being mediocre. One doesn't have to worry about becoming mediocre.

We create a standard for how we want to do things and everybody's got to buy into that standard or you really can't have any team chemistry. Mediocre people don't like high-achievers and high-achievers don't like mediocre people.

I would always rather do a mediocre script with a great filmmaker than a great script with a mediocre filmmaker.

Each time a mediocre singer performs, he is saying, in effect, "This is good enough for you." The audience, thrust into that familiar American mood of knowing something is wrong but not knowing what it is, unconsciously absorbs the insult and projects it back onto the mediocre performer in the form of inattention, rudeness and noise.

It is so much worse to be a mediocre artist than to be a mediocre post-office clerk.

Women right now, we can't make mediocre [stuff]. Men can and do make tons of mediocre stuff, but I feel like women.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

If the world is saved, it will not be by old minds with new programs but by new minds with no programs at all. Why not new minds with new programs? Because where you find people working on programs, you don't find new minds, you find old ones. Programs and old minds go together like buggy whips and buggies.

Moderation assures mediocrity -- nice, safe. Mediocrity is for the mediocre -- simple, okay. The intense rule; the mediocre follow.

[I]t is necessary to insist upon this extraordinary but undeniable fact: experimental science has progressed thanks in great part to the work of men astoundingly mediocre, and even less than mediocre. That is to say, modern science, the root and symbol of our actual civilization, finds a place for the intellectually commonplace man and allows him to work therein with success.

What's important is how we use our time on this earth, not how conspicuously we give our money away. What's important is the energy and courage we are willing to expend reversing entropy, battling cynicism, suffering and challenging mediocre minds, staring down those who would trample our dreams, taking a stand for magic, and advancing the potential of the human race.

These Utopian idealists like the Clintons who think they really do have the answers. They think they're following the best minds of their generation, but they're not the best minds. They don't realize that they may be the worst minds of their generation.

There are a lot worse things you can do with all your bucks than giving them to even a mediocre mutual fund - such as, for example, giving them to a mediocre hedge fund. If supporting the lifestyle of a mediocre fund manager is your favorite charity, who am I to stop you?

Mediocre prose might be read as an escape, might be spoken on television by actors, or mouthed in movies. But mediocre poetry did not exist at all. If poetry wasn't good, it wasn't poetry. It was that simple.

You can give a great film idea to a mediocre team and they may screw it up, but if you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they will turn it into a great film.

Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.

Great spirits often meet violent oppisition with mediocre minds.

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

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.

If thinking minds, questioning minds, doubting minds, are talking about faith, their whole life will become fake.

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.

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.

'Mediocre' tends to mean 'undistinguished', while snobs enjoy their distinguishing hallmarks of style - how they wear clothes, use words, where they go and gather and gossip. ...Whatever the circumstances the genius has put you into, the fact of individuality defends the soul against all class-action claims. No soul is mediocre, whatever your personal taste for conventionality, whatever your personal record of middling achievements.

I have said this many times, that there seems to be enough room in the world for mediocre men, but not for mediocre women, and we really have to work very, very hard.

I have so many girlfriends in their twenties who live in a white box apartment, having mediocre meals with mediocre friends, waiting for the life they want to hit them in their forties or fifties. They are settling in the now - what's the point?

How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of great minds is agreeing in the opinion of small minds?

There is plenty of room in the world for mediocre men but there is no room for mediocre women.

A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free.

The truth seems to be that propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds; neither can it inculcate something wholly new; nor can it keep people persuaded once they have ceased to believe. It penetrates into minds already open, and rather than instill opinion it articulates and justifies opinions already present in the minds of its recipients.

Men's minds must be free, and that means the minds of all, not the minds of a select few.

We pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success.

We're not aware of changing our minds even when we do change our minds. And most people, after they change their minds, reconstruct their past opinion - they believe they always thought that.

Comedy can be harder because if you aren't making the audience laugh, they're going to turn on you quicker. They'll go along with mediocre drama more than they'll go along with mediocre comedy.

But to paraphrase Henry Drummond in Inherit the Wind, ignorance and mediocrity are forever busy, and the forces of mediocrity aren't content with being mediocre; they'll do everything in their power to prevent even the humblest of teachers and children from accomplishing anything extraordinary. For good work shines a light on the failures of the mediocre, and that is a light which terrifies those who conspire to keep our nation's children, like themselves, ordinary.

How you wake up each day and your morning routine (or lack thereof) dramatically affects your levels of success in every single area of your life. Focused, productive, successful mornings generate focused, productive, successful days - which inevitably create a successful life - in the same way that unfocused, unproductive, and mediocre mornings generate unfocused, unproductive, and mediocre days, and ultimately a mediocre quality of life. By simply changing the way you wake up in the morning, you can transform any area of your life, faster than you ever thought possible.

A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another. If these minds love one another the home will be as beautiful as a flower garden. But if these minds get out of harmony with one another it is like a storm that plays havoc with the garden.

It is the habit of mediocre minds to condemn all that is beyond their grasp.

Divine souls suffer violent opposition from mediocre minds.

Highly developed spirits often encounter resistance from mediocre minds.

Women want mediocre men, and men are working to be as mediocre as possible.

At bottom, I mean profoundly at bottom, the FBI has nothing to do with Communism, it has nothing to do with catching criminals, it has nothing to do with the Mafia, the syndicate, it has nothing to do with trust-busting, it has nothing to do with interstate commerce, it has nothing to do with anything but serving as a church for the mediocre. A high church for the true mediocre.

For I assure you, without travel, at least for people from the arts and sciences, one is a miserable creature!... A man of mediocre talents always remains mediocre, may he travel or not - but a man of superior talents, which I cannot deny myself to have without being blasphemous, becomes - bad, if he always stays in the same place.

If the art of war were nothing but the art of avoiding risks, glory would become the prey of mediocre minds.... I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest.

It's hard to make something that's interesting. It's really, really hard. It's like a law of nature, a law of aerodynamics, that anything that's written or anything that's created wants to be mediocre. The natural state of all writing is mediocrity... So what it takes to make anything more than mediocre is such an act of will.

In intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makes mistakes of opposite kinds: in a remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds a mediocre man; and often, even in a mediocre artist, one finds a very remarkable man.

Albert Einstein once reported, "Great spirits have always encountered voilent opposition from mediocre minds." If you want to achieve your own greatness, to climb your own mountains, you'll have to use yourself as your first and last consultant.

This isn’t a game. We don’t want mediocre employees who can keep the status quo. We want souls. We want to win. And you’ve spent most of your time here being mediocre.

If you give a good idea to a mediocre group, they'll screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a good group, they'll fix it. Or they'll throw it away and come up with something else.

Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.

You don't achieve greatness in life being surrounded by mediocre people with mediocre values. Choose your company wisely.

Establishing and maintaining clarity for yourself and what you want is the starting point for success. Thus, maintaining extraordinary clarity is necessary to achieve extraordinary success. The problem is that most people maintain a mediocre level of clarity, which inevitably leads to a mediocre level of success.

My biggest fear as an actor is being involved in something mediocre, or being mediocre myself.

Virtually every subject is most effectively learned directly from the greatest thinkers, historians, artists, philosophers, scientists, prophets and their original works. Great works inspire greatness. Mediocre or poor works inspire mediocre or poor learning. The great accomplishments of humanity are the key to quality education.