People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.
Andrew Carnegie

Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.
Ambrose Bierce

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

Radio is a bag of mediocrity where little men with carbon minds wallow in sluice of their own making.
Fred Allen

Renouncement: the heroism of mediocrity.
Natalie Clifford Barney

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

The difference between greatness and mediocrity is often how an individual views a mistake.
Nelson Boswell

The function of a genius is not to give new answers, but to pose new questions which time and mediocrity can resolve.
Hugh Trevor-Roper

The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.
John Stuart Mill

The idea for which this nation stands will not survive if the highest goal free man can set themselves is an amiable mediocrity. Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.
John W. Gardner

The only sin is mediocrity.
Martha Graham

The present reeks of mediocrity and the atom bomb.
Rene Magritte

The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
Eric Hoffer

The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.
James F. Cooper

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

The world doesn't need any more mediocrity or hedged bets.
Anne Rice

There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking.
Jean de la Bruyere

There is a real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment.
Norman Vincent Peale

There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling.
Victor Hugo