Thomas Sankara Quotes

Changes do occur often with such suddenness in ways not foreseen except by isolated thinkers far removed from the consensus of their day.

Beginning reform is beginning revolution.

I really think it would be cowardly to pull back and not challenge the status quo, when the status quo may not be the right way for the field to go.

To innovate is not to reform.

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.

If you want to really change something, do not try to fight the existing reality. create a new reality.

You don't do new things and try to change the system without generating debate.

We want to challenge the established ideas with new ideas.

The trouble with innovation is that truly innovative ideas often look like bad ideas at the time.

You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen. We must dare to invent the future.

I want something completely new and different to happen, and lots of it. Stuff that makes us change the way we think about a market or the world. Something that inspires a new generation of crazy startups doing crazy things.

We are all revolutionaries now, addicts of change.

It will always be a battle a day between those who want maximum change and those who want to maintain the status quo.

Nobody sets out to break new ground. I think change comes when people have no other choice.

Like art, revolutions come from combining what exists into what has never existed before.

There is complete disdain for all that exists .... History, society, and the economics of present institutions are all minor issues in choosing a reform program ...

Wanting to reform everything is the same thing as wanting to destroy everything.

Countries and individuals do not change unless they undergo a trauma.

Change will always be violent.

Every single change is fought by those who would be affected by it.

The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions.

We have shaken things up when necessary.

No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law.

I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.

Everything new endangers something old. A new machine replaces human hands; a new source of power threatens old businesses; a new trade route wipes out the supremacy of old ports and brings prosperity to new ones. This is the price that must be paid for progress and it is worth it.