Louis Kronenberger Quotes

On a very rough-and-ready basis we might define an eccentric as a man who is a law unto himself, and a crank as one who, having determined what the law is, insists on laying it down to others. An eccentric puts ice cream on steak simply because he likes it; should a crank do so, he would endow the act with moral grandeur and straightaway denounce as sinners (or reactionaries) all who failed to follow suit. Cranks, at their most familiar, are a sort of peevish prophets, and it's not enough that they should be in the right; others must also be in the wrong.

I don't care much about conforming.

Ranger plays by his own set of rules, and I don't have a complete copy.

Before you can be eccentric, you must know where the circle is.

I was seen in earlier years by family members and people of authority as somebody wasting his time. I had trouble with the restrictions of conformity. It made me edgy.

I refused to conform to an image that a lot of people thought a president's brother should adopt.

Eccentric doesn't bother me. 'Eccentric' being a poetic interpretation of a mathematical term meaning something that doesn't follow the lines - that's okay.

I've never had any problem with crazy people. I like crazy people; I probably am a crazy person myself.

I have never felt the constraints of social acceptability.

I always wanted to go against hat grain because it was too restricting.

I would describe my style as off the wall. I like stuff that doesn't match. I just like to stand out.

I think a lot of people have lost respect for the individual, you know, the individual, the person who doesn't conform.

Eccentricities and irregularities are to be expected from him. They are in his character, they are visible in his eyes.

I don't really have routines or follow what my coaches tell me or how people want me to be: this stereotypical 'sleep on time and set good examples' person. I don't really know what setting a good example is.

I've never been a follower, but I've been an admirer.

My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist.

Madness is only a variety of mental nonconformity and we are all individualists here.

When I was in fourth grade, we were learning vocabulary words, and the word nonconformist came up. The teacher said, "It's somebody who whatever everybody is doing, they do the opposite." I remember raising my hand and saying, "Mrs. Christiansen, I would like to be a nonconformist."

In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service.

That's what being eccentric means--being natural.

I never wanted to be well-rounded. I do not admire well-rounded people nor their work. So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people. The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design.

I set out as a sort of self-dependent politician. My opinions were my own. I dashed at all prejudices. I scorned to follow anybodyin matter of opinion.... All were, therefore, offended at my presumption, as they deemed it.

He who thinks a great deal is not suited to be a party man: he thinks his way through the party and out the other side too soon.

I dont like doing whats expected. Ive always done best when Ive listened to my instincts rather than following convention or doing what other people think I should do.

The greater a man's talents, the more marked his idiosyncracies. Yet in the provinces originality is considered perilously close to lunacy.