{"id":35270,"date":"2016-07-18T01:00:26","date_gmt":"2016-07-18T05:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=35270"},"modified":"2019-05-20T09:30:29","modified_gmt":"2019-05-20T13:30:29","slug":"qotd-mediocrity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/07\/18\/qotd-mediocrity\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Mediocrity"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Moreover, as Somerset Maugham said, only a mediocre writer is always at his best, to which one might add that mediocrity is necessary for us to know what the best actually is. Mediocrities therefore perform a valuable service; they also serve who only stand and act routinely.<\/p>\n<p>Some are born mediocre, some achieve mediocrity, and some have mediocrity thrust upon them. I don\u2019t want to boast, but whenever I have sat on a committee, which I have always tried to avoid, my mind suddenly runs to unaccustomed platitudes, and I hear myself saying the most obvious and self-evident things as if they were revelations. There is something about a committee that fosters mediocrity; on a committee, one becomes as individual as a lemming and as colorful as <em>Pravda<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Theodore Dalrymple, <a href=\"http:\/\/takimag.com\/article\/rise_of_the_middling_theodore_dalrymple\/print#ixzz4DvDi596G\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Rise of the Middling&#8221;, <em>Taki&#8217;s Magazine<\/em><\/a>, 2016-07-09.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Moreover, as Somerset Maugham said, only a mediocre writer is always at his best, to which one might add that mediocrity is necessary for us to know what the best actually is. Mediocrities therefore perform a valuable service; they also serve who only stand and act routinely. Some are born mediocre, some achieve mediocrity, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,41],"tags":[139,1289],"class_list":["post-35270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","category-quotations","tag-psychology","tag-theodoredalrymple"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9aS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35271,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35270\/revisions\/35271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}