Definition of Mediocrity

Mediocrity

The quality of being mediocre; a middle state or degree; a moderate degree or rate.

Moderation; temperance.

Related Definitions:

Being, Degree, Mediocre, Middle, Moderate, Moderation, Of, Or, Quality, Rate, State, Temperance, The

Mediocrity Quotations

When small men attempt great enterprises, they always end by reducing them to the level of their mediocrity.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.
Dale Carnegie

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

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

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

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

Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.
Benjamin Disraeli

Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.
Blaise Pascal

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

Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.
Herman Melville

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
Arthur Conan Doyle

Mechanization best serves mediocrity.
Frank Lloyd Wright

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

Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary.
Warren G. Bennis

There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal bath where the hairy and slippery mix in a multiplication of mediocrity.
Vladimir Nabokov

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

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

Mediocrity would always win by force of numbers, but it would win only more mediocrity.
Ellen Glasgow

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

There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority.
Orison Swett Marden

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.
Robert Green Ingersoll

Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.
Fulton J. Sheen

One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could; but if not, why try at all? One wants to be very something, very great, very heroic; or if not that, then at least very stylish and very fashionable. It is this everlasting mediocrity that bores me.
Harriet Beecher Stowe

Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best.
Max Beerbohm

Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions.
William E. Gladstone

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

Media, the plural of mediocrity.
Jimmy Breslin

Virtue is defined to be mediocrity, of which either extreme is vice.
Rutherford B. Hayes

There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.
Paul Gauguin