Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes

When you create something new, you're breaking tradition - which is an act of defiance.

Nothing is more certain than that improvement in human affairs is wholly the work of the uncontented characters.

I'm appealing to people who want something different, but the world, on the whole, doesn't really embrace different things. Not on the whole.

He that is discontented in one place will seldom be happy in another.

If there is dissatisfaction with the status quo, good. If there is ferment, so much the better. If there is restlessness, I am pleased. Then let there be ideas, and hard thought, and hard work. If man feels small, let man make himself bigger.

I love challenging the status quo.

Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.

I've always been a risk taker; I've never believed in following the expected path.

The French higher education system has not adapted to this revolutionary period. [It] rewards people for their capacity to follow the path that is open to them. It does not encourage people to rebel or to develop their character.

A minority of malcontents, some justly, some unjustly, angry with the present state of things, will always exist in this world.

I have always believed in discontent – not grumbling, which is usually selfish and individual – but a disinclination to sit down idly, knowing things are wrong.

… 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.

Be skeptical, question authority, be a rebel. Do not conform and don’t be ordinary. Remember, all human progress is the result of far-sighted people challenging orthodoxy, tradition and rich, powerful, vested interests.

… discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man — and I will show you a failure.

We've never tried to fit any mould because we already broke the one we started.

Companies that tend to survive are the rebels.

I tell people all the time, the status quo is so untenable to me. Like, literally, I have no patience for it.

Deliver me from Swedish furniture. Deliver me from clever art. And the phone rang and Tyler answered. "If you don't know what you want," the doorman said, "you end up with a lot you don't." May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect. Deliver me, Tyler, from being perfect and complete.

Some of us aren't meant to belong. Some of us have to turn the world upside down and shake the hell out of it until we make our own place in it.

I'm young. You can't just sit there and be satisfied.

The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy...

It is not the nature of man, as I see it, ever to be quite satisfied with what he has in life.... Contentment tends to breed laxity, but a healthy discontent keeps us alert to the changing needs of our time.

America was not built by conformists, but by mutineers.

Those who are quite satisfied sit still and do nothing; those who are not quite satisfied are the sole benefactors of the world.

Keep your coins, I want change.