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Comment by sabat | Hacker News Reader

If I could speak to my younger, enthusiastic self, I'd say: stay strong. There are hordes of unambitious, lackluster people who will be threatened by you and your passion and your talent, and who will try very hard to beat it out of you. Don't let them.

Einstein said: "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities."

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Blegh. I hate that attitude.

Everyone has a story. Dismissing people by calling them mediocre, unambitious, or lackluster says more about you than them.

It's not necessarily dismissing them. Face it, some people are mediocre and unambitious. It doesn't say anything about what kind of people they are, but it says something about how they are intellectually and how pleasant working with them will be.

More to the point, people who are unambitious are mostly harmless. It's their right to be unambitious. It's those who start trying to persuade ambitious people that their ambitions will fail that are annoying.

Mmm, yes, and we will swat them away like the annoying gnats that they truly are. cackle

Ok, I dare you to go up to someone and say, "You're medicore and unambitious -- not that there's anything wrong with that! It just means you're not as intellectual as me and I probably wouldn't enjoy working with you."

You can judge by their reaction whether they think you're saying something about what kind of person they are.

I still maintain it says more about you than them, though.

More to the point, in my experience the kind of people who actually do great things are not the kind of people who spend their time thinking about how mediocre, unambitious and lackluster other people are.

but he didn't say that all spirits that have found violent opposition were great.

...hordes of unambitious, lackluster people...

Well said! Sadly, this is a fairly common situation for people trying to rise above what's typical and do something great. I now try to be very selective about who I share my intentions with, at least until I have something to show for it; to wit, when they try to persuade me "you can't do that" I can demonstrate that "I already did".

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