An intelligent investor gets satisfaction from the thought that his operations are exactly opposite to those of the crowd.
It's quite difficult to get through to the people who are really committed to these anti-progressive beliefs.
I won't go to places where you're going to find more attention. I go to the opposite.
To be a contrarian, you've got to be a contrarian against your own people.
"Why is everyone trying to tell me that when you get older it gets better?" I didn't believe it, because I'm so contrarian and suspicious of everything. And then to find that it's kind of true is nice.
To a contrarian like me, constant advice not to do something almost always starts me quickly down the risky, unpopular path.
I've made a career of being a contrarian. If I'm going to work with Tom Cruise, it's my instinct to be like, 'Well, I'm going to do the anti-Tom Cruise movie.'
I got told by pretty much everyone I knew that, if I'm going to be out in L.A., working, you need a car. So I was thinking, I'm going to try and not get a car, just because I'm a contrarian that way.
It requires strength of character in order to think and to act in opposite fashion from the crowd and also patience to wait for opportunities that may be spaced years apart.
I'm through with Tolstoy. He has ceased to exist for me.... If I eat a bowl of soup and like it, I know by that fact alone and with absolute certainty that Tolstoy will find it bad, and vice versa.
A contrarian at heart, I am often guided by what I disagree with and don't want.
Not a 'Mad Men' guy. Never got into it. I'm kind of a contrarian that way. If something gets too popular too fast before I can get on it, I just get really annoyed. Everybody tells me I'm an idiot; it's supposed to be amazing. I saw some of the second season; I loved it, but I was just detached. I didn't get into it.
We didn't set out to be cool. We set out to be an extremely tight band. We wanted to defy expectations. The more negative your mindset on coming to one of our gigs, the better for us, frankly.
Since I know how crazy this business is, I do the opposite of what I see other people doing.
I don't really know much about pirates, or pirate culture. I'd be a contrarian pirate.
