Daily Inspiration Quote by Hildegard Knef

Knef’s line isn’t motivational-poster bravado; it’s a survival strategy from someone who lived under klieg lights and public knives. “Make them good and big” treats failure like a performance choice: if you’re going to be judged anyway, at least control the scale and the story. The real target is in the second clause - “don’t be middling.” Middling is the sin that looks like safety but functions like slow disappearance, especially for an actress whose currency is attention and risk. A small mistake is still a mistake, but it doesn’t buy you anything: no reinvention, no myth, no proof you were reaching.

The subtext is almost defiant: ambition is going to cost you, so spend lavishly. There’s also a sly rejection of the tidy, apologetic femininity expected of mid-century female stars. “Good and big” implies agency, even pleasure, in transgression - not the trembling “I tried my best” posture but the sharper “I chose this, and I can choose again.”

Context matters: Knef’s career was punctuated by controversy and reinvention, from scandalized reactions to her roles to her later work as a singer and writer. In that world, moderation isn’t neutrality; it’s being edited out. The quote understands celebrity culture before it had a name: the public forgives spectacle more readily than it remembers beige competence. Better to risk a headline than settle for polite invisibility.