Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.
The great creators-the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors-stood alone against the men of their time.
Conformity may give you a quiet life; it may even bring you to a University Chair. But 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.
The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy...
Rebels and non-conformists are often the pioneers and designers of change.
Talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.
I have done quite a lot of outsider figures.
Exceptional people are often called crazy by the ordinary world.
The avant-garde in every field consists of the lonely, the friendless, the uninvited. All progress is the product of the unpopular.
The world has improved mostly because unorthodox people did unorthodox things. Not surprisingly, they had the courage and daring to think they could make a difference.
When I got to the Mavericks people were all giving me advice - change this, change that - and one thing that I didn't do was fire anybody.
Freaks are revolutionaries, and revolutionaries are freaks
In the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the nonbelongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks.
I’ve always been interested in leaders and rule breakers and artists and politicians.
It used to be controversial whether smoking caused lung cancer, it used to be controversial whether HIV caused AIDS. Now, there are a few mavericks who deny those things. In the case of climate change, I think the debate is going the same way in that there is a strong consensus that it is a serious matter.
I think there's always a call for people who are bucking the norm.
There's a fine line between eccentrics and geniuses. If you're a little ahead of your time, you're an eccentric, and if you're too late, you're a failure, but if you hit it right on the head, you're a genius.
Living in Dallas, I root for the Mavericks and the Stars and the Cowboys, but I've always pulled for the Chicago Cubs. I enjoy watching them play.
I certainly play people on the edge quite a lot. I am interested in what makes people odd and what makes them different. In life I try to play the edges. I have a horror of the herd. There are many, many different sorts of people. A lot of people are fairly uninteresting. I want to play the interesting ones. The villains are always more interesting to portray. Shakespeare knew that.
Virtually every advancement made by our species since civilization first peeked out of its nest of stone has been initiated by lone individuals, mavericks who more often than not were ignored, mocked, or viciously persecuted by society and its institutions.
some people seem to graze like sheep in the placid pastures of their faith. Some of them were born there and never broke away ... Others, after some wandering, found shelter there and are quiet and content. They look with a bland mystification at the mavericks.
Conformists die, but heretics live forever.
Throughout history, people with new ideas—who think differently and try to change things—have always been called troublemakers.
I tend not to hang with 'the crowd' because I believe that at any given moment in history, the crowd is only standing somewhere because some lone, brave nutjob broke down the walls for them first.
Journalists always want publishers or editors to leave. They're creative troublemakers - that's why you hire them.
