Emmanuel Lewis Quotes

Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom.

I think if I'm controversial it's not because I set out to be. It's because I've never felt comfortable being part of someone else's mainstream community.

Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.

Only dead fish go with the flow.

If you're trying to do something different, you can't ask someone to help, because they'll want to make it not different.

I'm all about zagging when everyone else is zigging.

I definitely like taking the dark horse approach and picking people you should not be getting behind, and you figure out a way to get behind them.

The worst advice I ever received from my dad was to play by the book.

The worst advice I ever received from my dad was to play by the book. My old man used to flip out whenever I would try to branch out and do something different. Although he didn't do it on purpose, he really held me back in the beginning.

You want to stand out and be unique and do something different. I always try to zig when they zag - I guess it's a football term, but it applies to a lot of different areas of life.

Throughout my entire life, I constantly tried to fight normality. I hate it. I hate the idea of it. I hate routine. I hate anything that feels remotely regular or right.

To a contrarian like me, constant advice not to do something almost always starts me quickly down the risky, unpopular path.

I like being unconventional.

I don't like the idea of fitting into a mould so as to conform. What I like is the danger, the difference - being unpredictable.

I am a contrarian.

When I was younger, I just thought that my plans were probably going to be more exciting than my parents' plans or the establishment. I sort of got by on being a little bit of a rebel.

I don't want to follow the herd.

When people expect me to go right, I'll go left. I'm unpredictable.

Whatever is conventional, I am the opposite. So if you want to walk in a straight line, I am going to walk in zigzags. If you want to throw a 1-2, I'll throw a 2-1.

Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.

A minority may be right. The majority is always wrong.

Always listen to experts. They will tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it.

I can see there's a connection between not following normal thinking and doing creative thinking. I wouldn't have had good scientific ideas if I had thought more normally.

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

If you're inside the box and a cross is coming, sometimes you need, as we say in Spanish, to smell the intuition, to smell where the cross is going.