Ruby Dee Quotes

Throughout history, people with new ideas—who think differently and try to change things—have always been called troublemakers.

Think different in order to change the rules. By definition, if you don't change the rules you aren't a revolutionary, and if you don't think different, you won't change the rules.

I don't think in terms of results at all. I think: what next insanity can I shock the world with?

The avant-garde in every field consists of the lonely, the friendless, the uninvited. All progress is the product of the unpopular.

I think there's always a call for people who are bucking the norm.

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.

I think it takes a little bit of crazy to make a difference in this world.

You'll never do anything creative, innovative or world changing if you fear criticism. Pioneers are easy targets for arrows!

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.

I've always been interested in people who think out of their time, and I have this passion, actually, for science. I'm just so enormously interested in how, when you think of these revolutionary ideas, other people get threatened, especially if you are different.

Dissidents should be paid 13 months' salary for a year, otherwise our mindless unanimity will bring us to an even more hopeless state of stagnation. It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts.

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received--hatred. The great creators--the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors--stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed.

To act with confidence beyond the range of familiar beacons and to overcome society’s resistance requires aptitudes that are present in only a small fraction of the population.

Oracle has grown and advanced because we've been consistently willing to cannibalize ourselves.

There's not enough people being daring and different. There are a lot of followers in hip-hop.

I feel like the fools who dream and who take risks are the ones who change the world.

An experimental idea doesn't have to be separated from a mainstream context. The really exciting thing is where those two things are together. That's where you can get real change.

If there had been no troublemakers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.

We want to challenge the established ideas with new ideas.

Exceptional people are often called crazy by the ordinary world.

The disobedient child is continuously condemned. The obedient child is, on the other hand, continuously praised. But have you heard of any obedient child having become world-famous in any dimension of creativity? Have you heard of any obedient child who has attained the Nobel prize for anything - literature, peace, science? The obedient child becomes just the common crowd. All that is added to existence is added by the disobedient.

Perhaps the way to meet tomorrow's challenges is not to use yesterday's solutions, but to dare to think the previously unthinkable, to speak the previously unspeakable, and to try that which was previously out of the question.

We must dare to invent the future

Roosevelt's magic lay in one facet of his personality: He knew how to take the risk. No other man in public life I knew could so readily take the challenge of the new.

The world has always gone forward when people have dared to have crazy ideas.