Average quotes
1.6K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"I think the average Jew is probably sharper intellectually than the average gentile, because for years and years he's had to live by his wits. Consequently, there has evolved a race of Jews who are more agile mentally than the rest of us."
"Average band with a great drummer sounds great, great band with an average drummer sounds average."
"I've always considered myself to be just average talent and what I have is a ridiculous insane obsessiveness for practice and preparation."
"Genius discovers a system; average talent stereotypes it till it is shattered by fresh genius."
"There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence."
"Average. It was the worst, most disgusting word in the English language. Nothing meaningful or worthwhile ever came from that word."
"The average result has to be the average result. By definition, everybody can't beat the market. As I always say, the iron rule of life is that only 20% of the people can be in the top fifth. That's just the way it is."
"It's the law of averages: put in more, come out with more."
"When you're average, you're just as close to the bottom as you are the top."
"I was never capable of being an average pupil. I would either seem refractory to any teaching and give the impression of being completely dumb or I would fling myself on my work with a frenzy, a patience, and a willingness to learn that astonished everybody. But to awaken my zeal, it was necessary to offer me something I liked. Once my appetite had been whetted, I became ravenously hungry."
"The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman. It is only when we know what were the conditions of the average woman's life - the number of children, whether she had money of her own, if she had a room to herself, whether she had help bringing up her family, if she had servants, whether part of the housework was her task - it is only when we can measure the way of life and experience made possible to the ordinary woman that we can account for the success or failure of the extraordinary woman as a writer."
"The average person spends two weeks over their lifetime waiting for the traffic light to change."
"With the invention of the blog and all this Internet stuff, everybody has an opinion; everybody has a voice. In fact, there was a time when the average person didn't have a voice so you had to pick an artist to speak for you."
"A little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors."
"If I earn a million dollars a week and the average American earns a thousand dollars a week, then when I spend twenty thousand dollars on something it’s the equivalent of the average American spending twenty dollars on something, right?"
"No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings."
"The first theory is that if we make the rich richer, somehow they will let a part of their prosperity trickle down to the rest of us. The second theory was the theory that if we make the average of mankind comfortable and secure, their prosperity will rise upward through the ranks."
"I go from exasperation to a state of collapse, then I recover and go from prostration to Fury, so that my average state is one of being annoyed."
"Here is a golden Rule.... Write legibly. The average temper of the human race would be perceptibly sweetened, if everybody obeyedthis Rule!"
"I've always had a problem with the average macho man - they've always been a threat to me."
