Conformity may give you a quiet life; it may even bring you to a University Chair. But 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.
Again and again in history some people wake up. They have no ground in the crowd and move to broader deeper laws. They carry strange customs with them and demand room for bold and audacious action. The future speaks ruthlessly through them. They change the world.
There are two kinds of man: the ones who make history and the ones who endure it.
We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.
If you read the life of great men and women who made important changes in history, there are two common features: One, they were angry at the state of affairs and, two, they were people of faith.
Men of great genius and large heart sow the seeds of a new degree of progress in the world, but they bear fruit only after many years.
The hope of the world is still in dedicated minorities. The trail-blazers in human, scientific and religious freedom have always been in a minority.
The ameliorating march of the last few centuries has been initiated by the heretics of each age, though I concede that the men and women denounced and persecuted as infidels by the pious of one century are frequently claimed as saints by the pious of a later generation.
The folks who go after grand challenges are impatient. They're pissed off. They're sick and tired, but in a passionate way. They're driven by a fire in their bellies to make a difference.
