Conventional Wisdom Quotes

Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom. ~ Sam Walton

Shakespeare and his few peers invented all of us. ~ Harold Bloom

The problem in our society is the ego psychology and conventional wisdom about "look out for #1." That conventional wisdom thinks that "love your enemy" is to some a principle no one can ever live by. ~ Robert Thurman

Many people have their reputations as reporters and analysts because they are on television, batting around conventional wisdom. A lot of these people have never reported a story. ~ Bob Woodward

Laws are always unstable unless they are founded upon the manners of the nation; manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

I'm particularly interested in black swan events: unprecedented surprises that destroy the conventional wisdom about how the world works. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

The modern mind is never popular in its own day. People hate being made to think. ~ Edith Hamilton

One of the greatest glories of growing older is the willingness to ask why and, getting no good answer, deciding to follow my own inclinations and desires. Asking why is the way to wisdom. Why are we supposed to want possessions we don't need and work that seems beside the point and tight shoes and a fake tan? Why are we supposed to think new is better than old, youth and vigor better than long life and experience? Why are we supposed to turn our backs on those who have preceded us and to snipe at those who come after? When we were small children we asked 'Why?' constantly. Asking the question now is more a matter of testing the limits of what sometimes seems a narrow world. One of the useful things about age is realizing conventional wisdom is often simply inertia with a candy coating conformity. ~ Anna Quindlen

All conventional wisdom has an element of truth to it, but good design requires more than an element of truth - it requires an ensemble of correct assumptions and valid calculations. ~ Henry Petroski

You should never sit around waiting for life to start because it's leaving you with every second."
"You should explore the world," I said, tears springing to my eyes for no rational reason. "Do dangerous thing. Ignore the fuck out of conventional wisdom. Walk on fire. Treat everyone with kindness because people are the only things worth holding on to. Live without regrets because there is no time for that shit. Never forget the way home, and leave a trail of breadcrumbs if you have to. Love, and get your heart broken, and say fuck it, and love again and then again. ~ Kate Canterbary

What I want is to have people's notion of adulthood no longer be so defined by being a parent. There is some kind of conventional wisdom that you're not really a mature person until you become a parent. ~ Meghan Daum

Conventional wisdom tells us not to dwell in the past. I believe, however, that we should hold hands with it. ~ Dana Glossbrenner

When you're used to being prepared to reject conventional wisdom, it leaves you open to learn more. ~ Mayim Bialik

Active management strategies demand uninstitutional behavior from institutions, creating a paradox that few can unravel. Establishing and maintaining an unconventional investment profile requires acceptance of uncomfortably idiosyncratic portfolios, which frequently appear downright imprudent in the eyes of conventional wisdom. ~ David F. Swensen

It seems to be most leaders have more conventional wisdom, but creative leaders have better common sense. ~ Pearl Zhu

It is worth remembering one of the important lessons of the Buck story: a small number of zealous advocates can have an impact on the law that defies both science and conventional wisdom. ~ Paul A. Lombardo

Create a vision and never let the environment, other people's beliefs, or the limits of what has been done in the past shape your decisions. Ignore conventional wisdom. ~ Lionel Robbins, Baron Robbins

Conventional Wisdom is certainly not wisdom, and only is conventional because foolishness is so common today. ~ Orrin Woodward

Influential people are never satisfied with the status quo. They're the ones who constantly ask, 'What if?' and 'Why not?' They're not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom, and they don't disrupt things for the sake of being disruptive; they do it to make things better. ~ Travis Bradberry

When you find errors in conventional wisdom-when everyone says A and A is not true-you gain competitive advantage. Only a few times do you have to find errors in conventional wisdom to make a living. ~ Larry Ellison

It is an unrepresentative city ... .They are so darn sure they are right on everything. The conventional wisdom in Manhattan, Bush believed, often failed to take opposing views into account except to dismiss such opinions as uninformed, prejudiced, and just plain wrong. ~ Jon Meacham

Ferguson also takes a swipe at the conventional wisdom surrounding aspects of World War I. "The key to the Allies' victory was not an improvement in their ability to kill the enemy," Ferguson argues, "but rather a sudden increase in the willingness of German soldiers to surrender."5 ~ Luke Williams

It always bothered me when people came off stage and were told how great they were. They weren't, really, in my opinion. It was then I started thinking that, contrary to conventional wisdom, film was the artful medium for the actor, not the stage. ~ Jack Nicholson

Convention (is) so often a mask for injustice. ~ Edith Hamilton

Highly successful leaders ignore conventional wisdom and take chances. Their stories inevitably include a defining moment or key decision when they
took a significant risk and thereby experienced a breakthrough. ~ Larry Osborne

Teaching isn't rocket science. It's about being engaged, listening, paying attention. Despite conventional wisdom, you don't need to talk a lot to teach well. You do need to care, though. Not so much about what people think of you or whether or not they like you, but about the kids and doing what's best for them. ~ Tucker Elliot

If you are the kind of person who listens to conservative advice, you may do okay in life, but you probably won't ever be a fantastic leader. You have to take risks, and you also have to go against conventional wisdom, because conventional wisdom doesn't make for startling advances in society. ~ Ruth Simmons

A willingness to go against the conventional wisdom was one of the side effects of looking at the world in a particular light. ~ Kem Nunn

The conventional wisdom of fandom is that you must give your fans anything they want. But I've never felt that that's a healthy attitude - and that comes from being a Star Wars fan. ~ DJ Shadow

A lot of people here some South in your mouth, and they automatically think you're dumb. They think if you talk funny, you are funny. – Lloyd Hand ~ David Pietrusza

Conventional wisdom, fooled by our misleading "physical intuition", is that the real world is continuous, and that discrete models are necessary evils for approximating the "real" world, due to the innate discreteness of the digital computer. ~ Doron Zeilberger

When your efforts run in the face of conventional wisdom and accepted mastery, persistence can look like madness. If you succeed in the end, this extreme originality reformulates into a new level of mastery, sometimes even genius; if you fail in the end, you remain a madman in the eyes of others, and maybe even yourself. When you are in the midst of the journey ... there's really no way of knowing which one you are. (p.129) ~ Hilary Austen

One of the useful things about age is realizing conventional wisdom is often simply inertia with a candy coating of conformity. ~ Anna Quindlen

You have to remain critically vigilant.Question every premise, challenge conventional wisdom, and never accept the truth of something merely because everyone else views it as obvious. ~ Friedrich Haller

Parents who can feel, who are conscious of their feelings and realize that uncontrolled anger, though it may be triggered by the child, usually has little to do with it, are less in danger of acting out their rage in the guise of pedagogy. I use the words "guilt" and "victim," rather than "causes" and "effects," as I am often politely urged to do, advisedly. Children are turned into victims by people, by their parents, not by some kind of automaton. These people have no right to behave as though they were merely destructive automatons and adhere to their ignorance, even though conventional wisdom and even moral and religious teachings confirm them in their actions by preaching forgiveness to their victims. One day the effects of such opinions will be seen in all their destructiveness. ~ Alice Miller

The beaten path can be a busy and distracting place. ~ Richard Brookhiser

When the topic of food comes up in conversation with family, friends or casual acquaintances, it's fascinating to hear the litany of rationalizations, knee-jerk defense mechanisms, self-limiting belief statements and general confusion or ignorance from otherwise intelligent folks when it comes to eating healthfully. But then again, Conventional Wisdom has often led even the best and brightest minds in nutritional science astray. ~ Mark Sisson

Then you understand the wide range of the totally new and unexpected creations they can sometimes come up with. Most people's minds travel along the same road traveled by everyone else, never straying off the route of conventional wisdom. Makers know no such boundaries. They have a rare ability to make their own roads of thought. Their minds venture through the wilderness of all that exists, combining random bits of knowledge in ways that have never been imagined before. ~ Terry Goodkind

There are lots of cycles to markets - boom and bust - and also in perceptions of people. The conventional wisdom of Steve Case as genius or fool was highly cyclical. The truth was always in the middle. ~ Steve Case

Conventional wisdom is invariably out of date. Because in the time it has taken to become conventional - to become what everyone believes - the world has moved on. Conventional wisdom is a remnant of the past. ~ Michael Crichton

Understanding the power of the underdog requires an effort. It requires standing up to conventional wisdom. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

By the time we reach adulthood we are so full of conventional wisdom, preconceived notions, and filters and limitations of various kinds that we don't even notice them. ~ Erland Bakke

Challenge conventional wisdom. There is almost always a better way. ~ Ziad K. Abdelnour

For all the tenure of humans on Earth, the night sky had been a companion and an inspiration. The stars were comforting. They seemed to demonstrate that the heavens were created for the benefit and instruction of humans. This pathetic conceit became the conventional wisdom worldwide. No culture was free of it. Some people found in the skies an aperture to the religious sensibility. Many were awestruck and humbled by the glory and scale of the cosmos. Others were stimulated to the most extravagant flights of fancy. ~ Carl Sagan

The hardest thing over the years has been having the courage to go against the dominant wisdom of the time to have a view that is at variance with the present consensus and bet that view. The hard part is that the investor must measure himself not by his own perceptions of his performance, but by the objective measure of the market. The market has its own reality. In an immediate emotional sense the market is always right so if you take a variant point of view you will always be bombarded for some time by conventional wisdom as expressed by the market. ~ Michael Steinhardt

The conventional wisdom with David Mamet is, you do not change a word. And that agrees with me. If you want to change any of David's words, it's like wanting to change the iambic pentameter in Shakespeare - you should do something else. ~ John C. McGinley

The conventional wisdom is that people come to the United States, and immigration is so great, and they say, 'America, what a great country.' And a lot of that is true. ~ James Gray

The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

All new ideas begin in a non-conforming mind that questions some tenet of the conventional wisdom. ~ Hyman Rickover

A whole nation cannot rise above itself. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

If your writing collides with the conventional wisdom, there's going to be some kind of friction. ~ Pankaj Mishra

Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage - at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom. ~ Carl Sagan

When critics surrender to the prevailing orthodoxy, the author says they adopt the rhetoric of an occupied country, one that expects no liberation from liberation. ~ Harold Bloom

I'm not so sure that the conventional wisdom makes any sense. Yes, it might be technically easy to track people and all that. But in the long-term I'm optimistic that we'll see the pendulum swing back in the other direction towards more privacy. ~ Rod Humble

[Conventional wisdom] very heavily tends to reflect the preferences and the interests of the elite. ~ Paul Krugman

The conventional wisdom is that if you are gay, you cannot play the romantic straight lead in a movie. ~ Ian McKellen

[T]he myth that there was somehow a magic wand in the early 1980s to cure AIDS - a wand that Reagan deliberately refused to wave - is now almost conventional wisdom. ~ Andrew Sullivan

Emily Dickinson sublimely unnames even the blanks. ~ Harold Bloom

It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will to doubt can be just as powerfully sapped by an internal sense that societal conventions must have a sound basis, even if we are not sure exactly what this may be, because they have been adhered to by a great many people for a long time. It seems implausible that our society could be gravely mistaken in its beliefs, and at the same time, that we would be alone in noticing the fact. We stifle our doubts, and follow the flock, because we cannot conceive of ourselves as pioneers of hitherto unknown difficult truths. It is for help in overcoming our meekness that we can turn to the philosopher. ~ Alain De Botton

I like uncovering the cultural prejudices I didn't even know. ~ A. J. Jacobs

Conventional wisdom tells us we'll only be happier after a divorce if the marriage itself was a war zone. ~ Ariel Gore

The obvious question is, what are the "conditions to which presumably we are genetically adapted"? As it turns out, what Donaldson assumed in 1919 is still the conventional wisdom today: our genes were effectively shaped by the two and a half million years during which our ancestors lived as hunters and gatherers prior to the introduction of agriculture twelve thousand years ago. This is a period of time known as the Paleolithic era or, less technically, as the Stone Age, because it begins with the development of the first stone tools. It constitutes more than 99.5 percent of human history - more than a hundred thousand generations of humanity living as hunter-gatherers, compared with the six hundred succeeding generations of farmers or the ten generations that have lived in the industrial age.
It's not controversial to say that the agricultural period - the last .5 percent of the history of our species - has had little significant effect on our genetic makeup. What is significant is what we ate during the two and a half million years that preceded agriculture - the Paleolithic era. The question can never be answered definitively, because this era, after all, preceded human record-keeping. The best we can do is what nutritional anthropologists began doing in the mid-1980s - use modern-day hunter-gatherer societies as surrogates for our Stone Age ancestors. ~ Gary Taubes

There's no "winning" when it comes to dealing with Internet trolls. Conventional wisdom says, "Don't engage. It's what they want." Is it? Are you sure our silence isn't what they want? Are you sure they care what we do at all? From where I'm sitting, if I respond, I'm a sucker for taking the bait. If I don't respond, I'm a punching bag. I'm the idiot daughter of an embarrassed dead guy. On the record. Forever. ~ Lindy West

The intricate and different life cycles of both male and female root-heads, and the great behavioral sophistication shown by the female in reconfiguring a host crab as a support system, all underscore the myopia of our conventional wisdom in regarding rhizocephalans as degenerate parasites because the adult anatomy of internal roots and external sac seem so simple. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

The succession multiplied the harm. Each passed on his conception of the papacy unchanged. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

Sex education in the modern manner has been well-described as plumbing for hedonists. ~ George F. Will

Contrary to conventional wisdom, opportunity always knocks more than once whereas a false step can never be retraced. ~ Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

There's a conventional wisdom that says that strategic thinking is much more important than relationship building, which doesn't seem to be nearly as highly valued as it should be, based on what some of the leaders that I've spoken with have said to me. ~ Tom Rath

Insight is the deep intuitive understanding of things, and it often breaks through the conventional wisdom. ~ Pearl Zhu

When I say "most people" I mean, of course, me after my first cocktail. ~ Bill Bryson

The English patrician bloomed in his natural climate. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

Conventional wisdom is that you should find a job that matches your passion. I think this is backwards. ~ Seth Godin

Remember, the conventional wisdom is, "Yeah, you can do this like [Donald] Trump has done it during the primaries, buuuut once you get to the general, it's not about national votes. It's about states! It's about swing states. It's about battleground states. And you've gotta have targeted expenditures, great ads running against your opponent in those swing states." ~ Rush Limbaugh

Analysts may be correct that the presidential election won't primarily turn on entitlements reform, but by choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate, Mitt Romney can, contrary to conventional wisdom, make it a winning issue and lay the foundation for a reform mandate when he wins. ~ David Limbaugh

I look at the blanked-out faces of the other passengers--hoisting their briefcases, their backpacks, shuffling to disembark--and I think of what Hobie said: beauty alters the grain of reality. And I keep thinking too of the more conventional wisdom: namely, that the pursuit of pure beauty is a trap, a fast track to bitterness and sorrow, that beauty has to be wedded to something more meaningful.

Only what is that thing? Why am I made the way I am? Why do I care about all the wrong things, and nothing at all for the right ones? Or, to tip it another way: how can I see so clearly that everything I love or care about is illusion, and yet--for me, anyway--all that's worth living for lies in that charm?

A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don't get to choose our own hearts. We can't make ourselves want what's good for us or what's good for other people. We don't get to choose the people we are.

Because--isn't it drilled into us constantly, from childhood on, an unquestioned platitude in the culture--? From William Blake to Lady Gaga, from Rousseau to Rumi to Tosca to Mister Rogers, it's a curiously uniform message, accepted from high to low: when in doubt, what to do? How do we know what's right for us? Every shrink, every career counselor, every Disney princess knows the answer: "Be yourself." "Follow your heart."

Only here's what I really, really want someone to explain to me. What if one happens to be po ~ Donna Tartt

If you challenge conventional wisdom, you will find ways to do things much better than they are currently done.
Bill James ~ Michael Lewis

a significant amount of Conventional Wisdom about healthy eating is marketing fodder that grossly distorts the fundamental truth that humans thrive on natural plant and animal foods or that relies on gimmicks to support the dogma of flawed, manipulated "research. ~ Mark Sisson

Conventional wisdom won't provide continual growth. ~ Jason Jennings

People can fall into habitual programmed patterns of thinking, underpinned by long-held beliefs and blind acceptance of conventional wisdom. Lying beneath such surface thoughts are mental cues that operate on the subconscious level, compelling people to act in certain ways, yielding conclusions that fit within their pre-existing biases. Many people are unaware that these processes are even occurring. ~ Mark Ireland

Seriously bad ideas (are) bad ideas which appeal to the prejudices of serious people. ~ Paul Krugman

No pain, no gain." You can hear the phrase in the world of physical exercise and conditioning. Muscles that feel no pain are probably getting neither stronger, nor more flexible. It presents an analogy for the exercise of the heart. Those who run the risk of genuine love alone must worry about emotional pain. The more friends; the more good-byes - and the more wakes to attend, the more graves to visit, the more deaths to share. Those who truly live life to the fullest will bear the full cup of suffering. Only those who are willing to pay the price in pain and anguish find life full to the brim. Happy people also suffer; they are no more lucky than the rest. They create their own happiness. That's the rule of thumb.
Some thumbs, however, don't seem to rule very well. Slogans and catch-words, for all their conventional wisdom, fail to carry the whole weight of truth; they leave too much room for false inferences. "No pain, no gain" may leave one with nothing but pain - an intolerable amount of it. There is simply no guarantee that pain will bring gain, that hardship will yield happiness, that suffering will make one a better person. It may; but it's not inevitable. ~ Robert Dykstra

Conventional wisdom is no wisdom at all. Conventional wisdom is taking somebody else's word for the way things are It's the followers of this world who rely on assumption. Not the leaders. ~ Richard Marcinko

Innovation for holders of conventional wisdom is not novelty but annihilation. ~ Marshall McLuhan

What's unique about the Mormon Church is that it encourages inquiry. I really do think my research and religion are all on the same page. I never could have come up with the notion of disruptive innovations, which went against a lot of conventional wisdom, if I hadn't been raised to always be asking questions. ~ Clayton M Christensen

Newspaper accounts must not only be studied, but, occasionally refuted. ~ Harold Holzer

It has always been dangerous to institutionalize hope, and we no longer live in a society in which we will be allowed to institutionalize memory. ~ Harold Bloom

Our history is in part a battle to the death of inadequate myths. If I can't convince you, I must kill you. That will change your mind. You are a threat to my version of the truth, especially the truth about who I am and what my nature is. The thought that I may have dedicated my life to a lie, that I might have accepted a conventional wisdom that no longer, if it ever did, corresponds to the external reality, that is a very painful realization. I will tend to resist it to the last. I will go to almost any lengths to prevent myself from seeing that the worldview that I have dedicated my life to is inadequate. ~ Carl Sagan

Economists often like startling theorems, results which seem to run counter to conventional wisdom. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

Contrarian thinking at its best simply asks, Is this really true? It speaks up when the politically correct answer or the conventional wisdom doesn't match reality - when things simply don't work the way everyone says they should. ~ Larry Osborne

Preconceived, fixed notions can be more damaging than cannon. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

When we heed God's Word, we are rejecting how the world tries to disciple us. ~ Matt Chandler

We must respond to opportunities before they become conventional wisdom. ~ Satya Nadella

The conventional wisdom in our business is that you have to grow and keep moving to survive. We never grew, always stayed tiny, and it serves us very well over the years, allowing us to pick and choose projects, and keeping our financial independence from our clients. We actually have a rather good track record, because we do select projects carefully. Most of our ideas don't eat dust but glimpse the light of day because we find it much more helpful to spend some serious time and effort before we start working on a project, rather than suffer through it afterwards. ~ Stefan Sagmeister

It's OK to not be fine. ~ Frasier Crane

He kept himself in line with popular opinion, which meant popular prejudice. ~ John Howard Griffin

It is now conventional wisdom that Americans do not care why we went to war in Iraq, that it is enough that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein. ~ Adam Schiff

The line that I am urging as today's conventional wisdom is not a denial of consciousness. It is often called, with more reason, arepudiation of mind. It is indeed a repudiation of mind as a second substance, over and above body. It can be described less harshly as an identification of mind with some of the faculties, states, and activities of the body. Mental states and events are a special subclass of the states and events of the human or animal body. ~ Willard Van Orman Quine

We need more than anniversary sentimentalism and holiday piety and patriotism. Where necessary, we must confront and challenge the conventional wisdom. It is time to learn from those who fell here. Our challenge is to reconcile, not after the carnage and the mass murder, but instead of the carnage and mass murder. It is time to fly into one another's arms. It is time to act. ~ Carl Sagan

The greatest difficulty in antiquity with that of altering the law; among the moderns, it is that of altering the manners. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Conventional wisdom in Galbraith's view must be simple, convenient, comfortable and comforting - though not necessarily true. ~ Steven D. Levitt