John Piper Quotes

I think that many Californians have been accustomed to, have normalized, that being good sometimes is good enough.

It's hard to lose when your standards are so low.

I've never been ambitious.

I'm not ambitious.

Most people think good enough is good enough.

Good is the enemy of great.

If aught be worse than failure from overstress of a life's prime purpose, it is to sit down content with a little success.

It's not a very big step from contentment to complacency.

Show me someone content with mediocrity and I'll show you someone destined for failure.

It is so much easier to live placidly and complacently. Of course, to live placidly and complacently is not to live at all.

Contentment is a kind of moral laziness; if there wasn't anything but contentment in his world, man wouldn't be any more of a success than an angleworm is

To the mediocre, mediocrity is a form of happiness.

I'm never satisfied. I can always find things that I can do better and go further on, so I force myself to accept when someone says, "We have it, it's good and we can move on."

...we all must admit that everything is fine and there's no need in the world to worry, and in fact we should realize what it would mean to us to UNDERSTAND that we're not REALLY worried about ANYTHING.

It's easy to fall into the trap of just cranking out things that are good enough to sell.

We suffered failures of imagination just like everyone else, our daring was wanting, and our daily contentment too nearly adequate for us to give it up.

For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.

Enough or not...it will have to do

If you hate your lot but wouldn't trade it, it's not your lot you hate.

Average is Your Enemy.

He who is content with what has been done is an obstacle in the path of progress.

We encourage one another in mediocrity.

Good is the enemy of great. And that's one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great.

Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don't have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don't have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.

Rest on laurels? I wish I could do that. No, you rest when you're dead