Bertrand Russell Quotes

Each work has to pass through these stages—ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.

There are always two kinds of people in the world - those who pioneer and those who plod. The plodders always attack the pioneers. They say that the pioneers have gobbled up all the opportunity, when, as a plain matter of fact, the plodders would have nowhere to plod had not the pioneers first cleared the way.

Pioneering is the work of individuals.

It is opposition that makes us productive.

Remarkable visions and genuine insight are always met with resistance. And when you start to make progress, your efforts are met with even more resistance. Products, services, career paths... whatever it is, the forces for mediocrity will align to stop you, forgiving no errors and never backing down until it's over

At their first appearance innovators have always been derided as fools and mad men.

It's the risk takers that move the human race forward.

Men of great genius and large heart sow the seeds of a new degree of progress in the world, but they bear fruit only after many years.

It is the swimmer who first leaps into the frozen stream who is cut sharpest by the ice; those who follow him find it broken, and the last find it gone. It is the men or women who first tread down the path which the bulk of humanity will ultimately follow, who must find themselves at last in solitudes where the silence is deadly.

Every good work has to face opposition, and the reaction of the opposition offered always helps the work.

Remarkable visions and genuine insights are always met with resistance.

Innovation is very important to me, especially professionally. The alternative, standing pat, leads to complacency, rigidity and eventually failure.

It's important to have a non-nostalgic view and say, let's look forward, because if we don't, all we'll hear are voices telling us to go back.

Challenge is what makes men. It will be the end when men stop looking for new challenges.

The footsteps of a pioneer become ultimately the highway of a nation.

In my mind, the men and women of NASA are history's modern pioneers. They attempt the impossible, accept failure, and then back to the drawing board while the rest of us stand back and criticize.

Many who had been ahead of their time, had to wait for her in very uncomfortable quarters.

If you don't have any enemies in life you have never stood up for anything.

All the heroes of tomorrow are the heretics of today.

Without bigots, eccentrics, cranks and heretics the world would not progress.

If you think you know what I'm doing wrong well you're gonna have to get in line.

Evolution is always the work of pioneers, and their followers are always small in number. This following is not a clique; it is the result of all the existing social forces; it is composed of all those who through innate or acquired capacity are ready to represent the existing degree of human revolution.

Ever since there have been people, there have been explorers, looking in places where other hadn't been before. Not everyone does it, but we are part of a species where some members of the species do, to the benefit of us all.

The avant-garde in every field consists of the lonely, the friendless, the uninvited. All progress is the product of the unpopular.

The doors of opportunity swing on the hinges of opposition!