Relative Greatness Quotes

Every day we're told that we live in the greatest country on earth. And it's always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos are born between July 23 and August 22, fitted queen-size sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it's startling to realize that other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are 'We're number two!

I recognize my limits but when I look around I realise I am not living exactly in a world of giants.

Great men are always exceptional men; and greatness itself is but comparative. Indeed, the range of most men in life is so limited that very few have the opportunity of being great.

On a level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the insipid flatness of our present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects.

Greatness depends on where you are coming from.

For of those [cities] that were great in earlier times, most of them have now become small, while those which were great in my time were small formerly.

If you are in an Edward Albee play, you say Edward Albee is the greatest playwright of all time... If you're in an Israel Horovitz play, you say Israel Horovitz is the greatest playwright of all time.

My exploits are nothing now to the average person.

If people view somebody as great, then he is.

I'm The Greatest, but only in relation to fighting.

All human excellence is but comparative. There may be persons who excel us, as much as we fancy we excel the meanest.

People always lean toward who's the best guitar player, who's the best singer? I don't see it that way. They're all the best, you know? They've all gotten your attention, you've admired them, you've tried to sing like them. That makes them the best, each and every one of 'em.

The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.

The aspiring efforts of genius, or virtue, either in active or speculative life, are measured, not so much by their real elevation, as by the height to which they ascend above the level of their age and country; and the same stature, which in a people of giants would pass unnoticed, must appear conspicuous in a race of pygmies.

Works of the intellect are great only by comparison with each other.

Some are dinning in our ears that we Americans, and moderns generally, are intellectual dwarfs compared with the ancients, or eventhe Elizabethan men. But what is that to the purpose? A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.