Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.
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.
We are concerned with that curious bunch of nonconformists who explain their participation in negative terms: that bunch of do-gooders that goes under all sorts of names - liberals, leftists, etc. These are the people who argue that they are not responsible for white racism and the country's 'inhumanity to the black man.'
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.
… 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.
The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy...
I'm interested in people who are not exactly the middle way, or who are trying something else because they cannot prevent themselves from being different, or they wish to be different, or they are different because society pushed them away.
Thieves, Heretics, and Whores
I'm interested in people who have to overcome obstacles, people who are not sheltered by the umbrella of the establishment, marginals.
I have done quite a lot of outsider figures.
The troublesome ones in a family are usually either the wits or the idiots.
Having seen TED from a distance, I always thought if ever there was a place for someone like me, the outcasts, people who maintained who they are despite being told what they were, it was TED.
Exceptional people are often called crazy by the ordinary world.
I've always identified with the misfits.
Society in Newport during the Revolution was gayer, more liberal, and more cosmopolitan than in either New York or Boston. Cast out from orthodox Boston at first as a company of heretics, the Quakers formed their colony on the widest platform of freethinking, welcoming to their number other spiritual outcasts of different creeds, or rather of nonconformists to varying systems of belief.
Take a look around, there are misfits everywhere.
The avant-garde in every field consists of the lonely, the friendless, the uninvited. All progress is the product of the unpopular.
I was quite intrigued by the idea of following the exploits of people who are often in the margins.
Misfits aren't misfits among other misfits.
We as Christians have a mandate to be nonconformists.
Without bigots, eccentrics, cranks and heretics the world would not progress.
I prefer people who rock the boat to people who jump out
I've always had a massive fascination with the modern day cowboys. Modern day outlaws or going against the system, and that's always been very intriguing to me.
You can never have enough nerds, freaks, and weirdos. You know what I'm sayin'?
We all have to remember that New Zealand is built on these kind of people who are rebels and renegades, people doing it their own way, fighting for freedom, and braving the elements. I think it's cool to celebrate that.
