W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

Wherever I see people doing something the way it's always been done, the way it's 'supposed' to be done, following the same old trends, well, that's just a big red flag to me to go look somewhere else.

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.

Mindless habitual behavior is the enemy of innovation.

I get a kick out of being an outsider constantly. It allows me to be creative.

You know that I'm always a proponent of doing things differently.

I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to innovate.

It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.

As beautiful as simplicity is, it can become a tradition that stands in the way of exploration.

Originality is dangerous.

I don't find myself so exercised by a desperation to be new.

The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.

I'm someone who always wants to do everything differently. If I have a pattern, I'd rather I didn't have a pattern. I want every book to be unpredictable and new. Damn it!

We live in world that wants to burnish the rough edges and straighten the crooked line, but conformity doesn't beget greatness.

You can't expect to be better than everybody else if you're doing the same thing as everybody else.

When you do anything completely different from a beaten path, many tend to pounce on you.

The one lesson I've learned from technology and food is the only time you know you're doing the wrong thing is when you're doing what everyone else is doing.

If your idea is truly innovative, you're going to hear from the naysayers. After all, if it really were such a good idea, someone would have already done it, right?

If I do something I think is new, it will be misunderstood, but if people like it, I will be disappointed because I haven't pushed them enough. The more people hate it, maybe the newer it is. Because the fundamental human problem is that people are afraid of change.

New ideas are not born in a conforming environment.

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.

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

There's always a risk if you don't do things the way you've done things before.

To create is to resist; to resist is to create.

I'm against fashionable thinking.