Blaise Pascal Quotes

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

What concerns me, is the general social tendency to enforce a level, above which nothing rises and stands out.

Who says what is the right way and what isn't? That is some imagined social construct that people made up to feel okay about being average.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.

I've always balked at anything that feels like a clique, even if it's not always in my best interest to do so. I like each individual, fedora-wearing hipster - it's just the greater gestalt that rubs me the wrong way.

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

Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus.

Unless you are unique, your opinion goes out the window.

Public opinion, a vulgar, impertinent, anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who is not content to be the average man.

I wouldn't say I'm normal. But I'm relatively stable. When I think of normal, I think of mediocrity, and mediocrity scares the f--- out of me.

There is one characteristic of the present direction of public opinion, peculiarly calculated to make it intolerant of any marked demonstration of individuality. The general average of mankind are not only moderate in intellect, but also moderate in inclinations: they have no tastes or wishes strong enough to incline them to do anything unusual, and they consequently do not understand those who have, and class all such with the wild and intemperate whom they are accustomed to look down upon.

I went to public school for like, one day. I don't get it. Everybody tries to be exactly the same. I think being an outsider is a good thing.

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.

I grew up in a small town where everyone wanted to be the same or look the same and was afraid to be different.

It does not prove a thing to be right because the majority say it is so.

There are times when the voice of repining is completely drowned out by various louder voices: the voice of government, the voice of taste, the voice of celebrity, the voice of the real world, the voice of fear and force, the voice of gossip.

You pay a certain penalty for going your own way. A lot of people think you're nuts, and you're not as popular with girls as you should be.

Politics is a herd mentality. Politicians don't really lead. Politicians reflect what they think is consensus opinion.

If you don't like basketball and you're from Kentucky, they'll kick you out!

In America, educators punish those who actually think for themselves. There is only acceptance for popular opinion.

It is hard to be an individual in Japan.

I didn't want to wear a checked shirt and grow a mustache - that's what you had to do, and everyone did.

While children are struggling to be unique, the world around them is trying all means to make them look like everybody else.

The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.

Anyone who draws attention to himself as an individual, is viewed with suspicion. We acquired this tendency, of course, from America, and we must resist it: levelling, and imitation of what others are already doing.