
“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
Variant: Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds.
As quoted in Optimum Sports Nutrition (1993) by Michael Colgan, p. 144
“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
Variant: Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Letter to Morris Raphael Cohen, professor emeritus of philosophy at the College of the City of New York, defending the appointment of Bertrand Russell to a teaching position (19 March 1940).
1940s
Variant: Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thoughts in clear form.
“The prophet is appointed to oppose the king, and even more: history.”
BBC radio broadcast (1962), as quoted in The Great Thoughts (1984) by George Seldes
“Two great poets are stronger than two thousand mediocrities”
31
Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), The Catholic Writer Today (2013)
“The quickest way to kill the human spirit is to ask someone to do mediocre work.”
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 160.
Preface
The Reorganization of the European Community (1814)
Source: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 121.
Context: Be there, for once and all,
Severed great minds from small,
Announced to each his station in the Past!
Was I, the world arraigned,
Were they, my soul disdained,
Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!
Now, who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes
Match me: we all surmise,
They this thing, I that: whom shall my soul believe?