Disrupting Status Quo Quotes

I'm not afraid to shake up the system, and government needs more shaking up than any other system I know.

I'm about challenging people. Like, properly challenging them and their assumptions.

A great philosophy is not one that passes final judgments and establishes ultimate truth. It is one that causes uneasiness and starts commotion.

The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions.

I wanted to make people think of a totally different way of living from that which we, educated people, live. I would absolutely not want anyone to find it beautiful or good without a thought.

How do you fight an idea—especially a new idea?

To imagine a new world is to live it daily, each thought, each glance, each step, each gesture, killing and recreating, death always a step in advance. To spit on the past is not enough. To proclaim the future is not enough. One must act as if the past were dead and the future unrealizable.

We have been doing things that are contrary; the things that people tell us won't work from the beginning. In fact, the only way to get ahead is to find errors in conventional wisdom.

We mustn't be traditional in the way we communicate with people - especially with the Establishment. We should surprise people by saying new things in an entirely new way. Communication of that sort can have a fantastic power so long as you don't do only what they expect you to do.

I'm glad I've established this as my zone: 'the taboo breaker.'

I've done that my whole life - I've taken the way people think and turned it on its head.

Creativity is an area in which younger people have a tremendous advantage, since they have an endearing habit of always questioning past wisdom and authority.

I've never believed it's really so important that you conform to the ways of the system in order to beat the system. I think that the system follows a great deal.

It's very hard to transgress; we have the furniture of transgression without the imagery and iconography to actually do it.

Any pigeonhole is something to be rebelled against.

Artists are here to disturb the peace.

My favorite models are always going to be the people who are pushing the boundary and challenging what it is to be a model.

If your writing collides with the conventional wisdom, there's going to be some kind of friction.

I want to make movies and pieces of television and pieces of art that crack everyone's assumptions.

I am interested in work that jumps boundaries, and that makes trouble. Part of me is comfortable with that: with being a bit of a troublemaker.

I've always been called "controversial." I think if I were not controversial I wouldn't be doing my job.