Karl A. Menninger Quotes

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.

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.

Nothing is good but mediocrity. The majority has settled that, and finds fault with him who escapes it at whichever end... To leave the mean is to abandon humanity.

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.

According to one influential wing of modern secular society there are few more disreputable fates than to end up being 'like everyone else' for 'everyone else' is a category that comprises the mediocre and the conformist, the boring and the suburban. The goal of all right-thinking people should be to mark themselves off from the crowd and 'stand out' in whatever way their talents allow.

Normal means lack of imagination and creativity.

Normalcy is not interesting.

Ain't no man can avoid being average, but there ain't no man got to be common.

I don't want to be special.

The world thinks eccentricity in great things is genius, but in small things, only crazy.

If a man's got talent and guts to buck society, he's obviously above average. You want to hold on to him. You straighten him out and turn him into a plus value. Why throw him away? Do that enough and all you've got left are the sheep.

And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary?

You have not yet learned that in this life you have to be like everyone else: the perfect mediocrity--no better, no worse. Individuality is a monster and it must be strangled in its cradle to make our friends feel comfortable.

You'll turn out ordinary if you're not careful.

As time passed and he grew to know people better, he began to think of himself as an extraordinary man, one set apart from his fellows. He wanted terribly to make his life a thing of great importance, and as he looked about at his fellow men and saw how like clods they lived it seemed to him that he could not bear to become also such a clod.

Why obliterate the exceptional merely in order to make the outstanding look finer than it was?

People want you to be ordinary.

Is anyone human actually normal? I'm beginning to think being normal is actually abnormal.

You have to be different, great or first.

The only glory most of us have to hope for is the glory of being normal.

Nobody would stay interested in me if I was normal

Normal is absolutely my least favorite word.

Be special. Be anything but mediocre.

To be different is not necessarily to be ugly; to have a different idea is not necessarily to be wrong. The worst possible thing is for all of us to begin to look and talk and act and think alike.

Every great man is unique.