I'd rather write one good book than ten mediocre ones.
Donna Tartt

I'm not a big fan of mediocre.
Marcia Gay Harden

In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.
Friedrich Nietzsche

It's more than magnificent - it's mediocre.
Samuel Goldwyn

Many novelists take well-defined, precise characters, whose stories are sometimes of mediocre interest, and place them in an important historical context, which remains secondary in spite of everything.
Raymond Queneau

Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge.
Claude Bernard

Mediocre men work at their best; men seeking excellence strive to do better.
Edwin Louis Cole

Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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

Movie directing is a perfect refuge for the mediocre.
Orson Welles

My record at the University of California as an undergraduate was mediocre to say the best.
Douglass North

No serious-minded man should have time for the mediocre in any phase of his living.
James Cash Penney

No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.
Alan Turing

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
W. Somerset Maugham

Only the mediocre are always at their best.
Jean Giraudoux

People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don't know when to quit. Most men succeed because they are determined to.
George Allen

Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
Joseph Heller

Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
Joseph Heller

Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
Lily Tomlin

The great universal family of men is a utopia worthy of the most mediocre logic.
Isidore Ducasse Lautreamont