Breaking the Status Quo Quotes

If we never do anything which has not been done before, we shall never get anywhere. The law will stand still whilst the rest of the world goes on; and that will be bad for both.

The nature of an innovation is that it will arise at a fringe where it can afford to become prevalent enough to establish its usefulness without being overwhelmed by the inertia of the orthodox system.

We not only went after some sacred cows, we went after the whole herd.

I pushed the envelope as far as it needed to be pushed, and now it's on the floor, and people seem to want it to stay there.

We need people to point out groupthink - We need people to point out stale, old, dumb thinking - and we sometimes need to do that when it's considered dangerous, strange, or, by some, offensive. And we should be, all of us, trying to protect that. It's really important.

You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness.

I will not allow people to impose rules on me that don't make sense to me. And I live and work very much outside the literary world and the literary system. What they think and what they believe and what their rules are mean nothing to me.

It's really important, whether you're a conservative or a liberal, to always challenge the conventional wisdom, which is what I've tried to do in all my work.

It's only by being disruptive that you get people to have a conversation about an issue.

Don't listen to the prevailing majority points of view. If you have new ideas, push them.

I don't mind being stereotyped in some way and playing certain kinds of guys, but if I can find something to occasionally get a break from that, that would be nice. And I feel like I manage to.

Sometimes you have to change the mold. If people keep following the same Hollywood mold, you're going to get the same thing. And as a Black actress, there's not a whole lot out there for us, unless we're creating it.

Experience forced on men’s minds the conviction that what had ever been must ever be.

It was a big decision to leave the system because many people said I would fail.

We need creativity in order to break free from the temporary structures that have been set up by a particular sequence of experience.

Nothing changes if we keep playing it safe.

An understandable prejudice of intellectual life leads us to view tilters at orthodoxy as courageous front-line innovators.

Disobedience is the vehicle of progress.

We get used to a certain kind of colour of form or format, and it's acceptable. And to puncture that is sticking your neck out a bit. And then pretty soon, that's very acceptable.

The most difficult is the first family, to bring someone out of the world.

Too many would-be executives are slaves of routine.

I'm not expecting much work in Hollywood, to be honest. People stick to film because they tend to get offered the same roles over and over again, and it's safe. But I'm not interested in doing that.

If you don't step forward, you're always in the same place.

Innovation at large companies is hard, but it doesn't have to be.

It ain't easy to break out of a mold, but if you do your work, people will ultimately see what you're capable of. Too often, people find it easier to make assumptions and stick with what they believe. They put you in a place and it makes their job easier. The good people constantly search for something different.