This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
Men in excess of happiness or misery are equally inclined to severity. Witness conquerors and monks! It is mediocrity alone, and a mixture of prosperous and adverse fortune that inspire us with lenity and pity.
Character | Excess | Fortune | Mediocrity | Men | Pity | Witness | Happiness |
The only difference between men of great achievement and those who remain in mediocrity is that the great pay little attention to what has been done and what obstacles or apparent reasons may stand in the way of achievement but devote themselves to contemplating what can or ought to be done. Those who allow their mental and emotional natures to recoil, refusing to let this sense reach out into the undiscovered, destroy their own capabilities and this keeps them always in the prison house of limitation. But it should be noted that prison is only the recoil or reflex of their own nature. Genius is that which goes on through conditions and circumstances and keeps eternally in the process of expansion and extension of achieving power.
Achievement | Attention | Circumstances | Destroy | Genius | Little | Mediocrity | Men | Nature | Power | Prison | Sense |
A brand new mediocrity is thought more of than accustomed excellence.
Excellence | Mediocrity | Thought | Thought |
There are circumstances of peculiar difficulty and danger, where a mediocrity of talent is the most fatal quality that a man can possibly possess. Had Charles the first, and Louis the Sixteenth, been more wise or more weak, more firm or more yielding, in either case they had both of them saved their heads.
Circumstances | Danger | Difficulty | Man | Mediocrity | Wise | Yielding | Talent |
Persevering mediocrity is much more respectable, and unspeakably more useful, than talented inconstancy.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
Mediocrity | Men |
Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
Forms are for mediocrity, and it is fortunate that mediocrity can act only according to routine.
Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll
In the republic of mediocrity genius is dangerous.
Genius | Mediocrity |
Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen
Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.
Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good.
Mediocrity | Public |
Only with absolute fearlessness can we slay the dragons of mediocrity that invade our gardens.
Absolute | Mediocrity |
It is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us.
Mediocrity | Taste |
Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton
The function of a genius is not to give new answers, but to pose new questions which time and mediocrity can resolve.
Genius | Mediocrity | Time |
Imposing an alleged uniform general method upon everybody breeds mediocrity in all but the very exceptional. And measuring originality by deviation from the mass breeds eccentricity in them.
Deviation | Eccentricity | Mediocrity | Method | Originality |
The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.
Mediocrity | Power | World |
Nicolas Chamfort,fully Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort, also spelled Nicholas
Most social institutions seem to be designed to keep man in a state of intellectual and emotional mediocrity that makes him more fit to govern or be governed.
Man | Mediocrity | Govern |
Nicolas Chamfort,fully Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort, also spelled Nicholas
A good number of works owe their success to the mediocrity of their authors' ideas, which match the mediocrity of those of the general public.
Good | Mediocrity | Success |
The difference between greatness and mediocrity is often how an individual views a mistake.
Greatness | Individual | Mediocrity |