Tom Robbins Quotes

By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible. Those who have cautiously done no more than they believed possible have never taken a single step forward

Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.

If no one ever broke the rules, then we'd never advance.

Human progress has always been driven by a sense of adventure and unconventional thinking.

I think there's always room for more innovation and new things.

Exploration is really the essence of the human spirit.

Perhaps the spirit of adventure, be it mental or material adventure, is a factor so essential in human progress that no emphasis of it is undue.

Idealists foolish enough to throw caution to the winds have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.

Entrepreneurs are misfits to the core. They forge ahead, making their own path and always, always, question the status quo.

The spirit of adventure to embrace the new and the incredible belief in the power of invention attracted me to the Russian avant-garde.

Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved.

… all change in history, all advance, comes from the nonconformists. If there had been no trouble-makers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.

I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.

The man with a new idea is a crank until his idea succeeds.

Sometimes people invent things because they want to stay alive or feed their children or conquer the village next door. But just as often, new ideas come into the world simply because they're fun. And here's the really strange thing: many of those playful but seemingly frivolous inventions ended up sparking momentous transformations in science, in politics and society.

It's what's missing, I think, from most music - the rebellious part. That rebelliousness is part of great rock music or great literature or any great creative stuff.

Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.

If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.

Whatever you do, don't play it safe. Don't do things the way they've always been done. Don't try to fit the system. If you do what's expected of you, you'll never accomplish more than others expect.

According to the history of human progress, it is disobedience to nature that has constituted that progress.

Everything we are doing is on the cutting edge of so many different industries and so many different interests. We're out there in the sunshine, and it feels fine.

When you're really having fun, you're always doing it a little bit in a way that you're not supposed to. That's when great things happen.

If your work isn't exciting, doesn't stir the emotions, where's the challenge? Where's the progress if you always play it safe?

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.