Conventional Wisdom quotes:

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Never accept ultimatums, conventional wisdom, or absolutes. -- Christopher Reeve
Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom. -- Sam Walton
The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events. -- John Kenneth Galbraith
I've always shied away from conventional wisdom, though I know the power of it. -- Peter Jennings
Economists often like startling theorems, results which seem to run counter to conventional wisdom. -- Joseph Stiglitz
To build a great company, which is a CEO's job, sometimes you have to stand up against conventional wisdom. -- Carly Fiorina
Mainstream media tend to just mouth the conventional wisdom, to see everything through the filter of right and left. -- Arianna Huffington
The most important lesson of New Labour is this: Every time we made progress we did it by challenging the conventional wisdom. -- Ed Miliband
I'm not a money manager, but I can tell you what the conventional wisdom is. The younger you are, the more risk you can take on. -- Maria Bartiromo
Many people have their reputations as reporters and analysts because they are on television, batting around conventional wisdom. A lot of these people have never reported a story. -- Bob Woodward
In the beginning, Adam was instructed to earn the bread by the sweat of his brow - not Eve. Contrary to conventional wisdom, a mother's place is in the home! -- Ezra Taft Benson
All conventional wisdom has an element of truth to it, but good design requires more than an element of truth - it requires an ensemble of correct assumptions and valid calculations. -- Henry Petroski
I reject most conventional wisdom. -- Rush Limbaugh
Conventional wisdom would have one believe... -- Mumia Abu-Jamal
The only way to get ahead is to find errors in conventional wisdom. -- Larry Ellison
Doubt the conventional wisdom unless you can verify it with reason and experiment -- Steve Albini
Conventional wisdom holds that setting a timetable for getting American troops out of Iraq would be a mistake. -- Nick Clooney
People always blame the girl; she should have said no. A monosyllable, but conventional wisdom has always been that boys can't manage it. -- Anna Quindlen
Conventional wisdom on government's role in inequality often has it backwards. Tax reforms have resulted in a more progressive federal income tax; government transfer payments have become less progressive. -- Paul Ryan
It is now conventional wisdom that Americans do not care why we went to war in Iraq, that it is enough that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein. -- Adam Schiff
Conventional wisdom is no wisdom at all. Conventional wisdom is taking somebody else's word for the way things are It's the followers of this world who rely on assumption. Not the leaders. -- Richard Marcinko
Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, there is no reason either in football or in poetry why the two should not meet in a man's life if he has the weight and cares about the words. -- Archibald MacLeish
Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage - at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom. -- Carl Sagan
The most important aspect of my personality as far as determining my success goes; has been my questioning conventional wisdom, doubting experts and questioning authority. While that can be painful in your relationships with your parents and teachers, it's enormously useful in life. -- Larry Ellison
I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions... Don't take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can't. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself. -- Noam Chomsky
Doubt the conventional wisdom unless you can verify it with reason and experiment. -- Steve Albini
When you're used to being prepared to reject conventional wisdom, it leaves you open to learn more. -- Mayim Bialik
The conventional wisdom is that if you are gay, you cannot play the romantic straight lead in a movie. -- Ian Mckellen
The biggest handicap in research is an ability to think outside the box. The handicap is being encumbered by all the conventional wisdom in a given field. -- Aubrey de Grey
Around '93, '94, the conventional wisdom about the Internet was that it was a toy for academics and researchers. So it was very, very underestimated for about two years. -- Marc Andreessen
I'm very proud of the Rome episode of 'No Reservations' because it violated all the conventional wisdom about making television. You're never, ever supposed to do a food or travel show in black and white. -- Anthony Bourdain
Conventional wisdom suggests the primary motivator for entrepreneurs is money or wealth creation and, in fact, much of the political debate tends to center around what kind of tax or regulatory policy changes will turn corporate suits into small business adventurers overnight. -- Chip Conley
It's funny, because in deference to conventional wisdom, I spent my struggling writer years trying to suppress my naturally baroque literary voice and write clean, spare prose. I finally gave up and embraced my baroque tendencies when I wrote the Kushiel series. -- Jacqueline Carey
Community organizing is all about building grassroots support. It's about identifying the people around you with whom you can create a common, passionate cause. And it's about ignoring the conventional wisdom of company politics and instead playing the game by very different rules. -- Tom Peters
Analysts may be correct that the presidential election won't primarily turn on entitlements reform, but by choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate, Mitt Romney can, contrary to conventional wisdom, make it a winning issue and lay the foundation for a reform mandate when he wins. -- David Limbaugh
What's different now is that while political leaders used to give talking points to talk radio, now talk-radio hosts are giving talking points to political leaders. It's all part of the suffocating spin cycle we're in. In media, politics and publishing, the conventional wisdom is to play to this base. -- John Avlon
Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed levees and exploded the conventional wisdom about a shared American prosperity, exposing a group of people so poor they didn't have $50 for a bus ticket out of town. If we want to learn something from this disaster, the lesson ought to be: America's poor deserve better than this. -- Michael Eric Dyson
The censors have always had a field day with James Joyce, specifically with 'Ulysses,' but also with his other writings. The conventional wisdom is that this is because of sexually explicit passages (and there certainly are those). I have always thought that what the critics hated and feared about Joyce is his cry for human freedom. -- Karen DeCrow
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the blue blazer's a bit of a loose cannon. A suit decided long ago what it wanted to be, and it doesn't want to hear your ideas, but a blue blazer only got around to half the job. So it leaves it up to you to find its bottoms. Gray slacks, blue jeans, patterns, white pants and different blue shades all work. -- Willie Geist
The conventional wisdom is often wrong. -- Steven Levitt
Question everything, even if it represents generations of conventional wisdom. -- Robert Ringer
Conventional wisdom is so scary because what if everybody's wrong? -- Kevin Costner
Challenge conventional wisdom. There is almost always a better way. -- Ziad K. Abdelnour
Innovation for holders of conventional wisdom is not novelty but annihilation. -- Marshall McLuhan
One of the toughest battles in intelligence is combating conventional wisdom. -- Robert M. Gates
Conventional wisdom can get us into so much trouble, especially as artists. -- Kevin Costner
I think in conventional magazine wisdom, you need to have a redesign every decade or so. -- Timothy White
An expert must be BOLD if he hopes to alchemize his homespun theory into conventional wisdom. -- Steven Levitt
All new ideas begin in a non-conforming mind that questions some tenet of the conventional wisdom. -- Hyman Rickover
I'm particularly interested in black swan events: unprecedented surprises that destroy the conventional wisdom about how the world works. -- Paolo Bacigalupi
Conventional wisdom tells us we'll only be happier after a divorce if the marriage itself was a war zone. -- Ariel Gore
Contemporary art challenges us.. it broadens our horizons. It asks us to think beyond the limits of conventional wisdom. -- Eli Broad
Never accept conventional wisdom when it comes to finance. If others keep failing, why do you want to follow them? -- Ziad K. Abdelnour
I don't believe any experiment until it is confirmed by theory. I find this is a witty inversion of "conventional" wisdom. -- Arthur Eddington
One of the useful things about age is realizing conventional wisdom is often simply inertia with a candy coating of conformity. -- Anna Quindlen
Conventional wisdom tells us to avoid taking unalterable action while at a low point in life. I have never been conventional. -- Therese Fowler
In the conventional wisdom of conservatives, the modern search for security is regularly billed as the greatest single threat to economic progress. -- John Kenneth Galbraith
A wise and clear-eyed book, Future Hype challenges the conventional wisdom about technological change and provides a fresh perspective on our so-called computer age. -- Nicholas G. Carr
I think the conventional wisdom is vastly true. There will be a huge growth in mobile, and this is something we are witnessing every day. -- Maurice Levy
It is our task, both in science and in society at large, to prove the conventional wisdom wrong and to make our unpredictable dreams come true -- Freeman Dyson
The secret of literature, which conventional people don't guess, is that writers are forever looking for the surprising revelation - not for reinforcement of collective wisdom. -- Carol Bly
There are no shortcuts to knowledge, especially knowledge gained from personal experience. Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all. -- Ben Horowitz
Contrary to conventional wisdom, dance is not a universal 'language' but many languages and dialects. There are close to 6000 verbal languages, and probably that many dance languages. -- Judith Lynne Hanna
Anyone who strays too far from the majority view or the conventional wisdom is bound to be labeled "arrogant," "a maverick," "a Wildman," "weird," or even "crazy." -- John Eliot
My businesses are usually built around challenging conventional wisdom, so I tend to gain by taking the other side. It's been very profitable and entertaining for me -- Mark Cuban
Create a vision and never let the environment, other people's beliefs, or the limits of what has been done in the past shape your decisions. Ignore conventional wisdom. -- Lionel Robbins, Baron Robbins
Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there's a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction. -- Sam Walton
The world is always changed by people who don't listen to conventional wisdom. I think we often set our goals too small and try to accomplish them too quickly. -- Rick Warren
Conventional wisdom nor scientific, mathematical prove of randomness in life could do nothing to deter human's curiosity for the unknown, however small the chance of a positive outcome maybe. -- Vann Chow
Highly successful leaders ignore conventional wisdom and take chances. Their stories inevitably include a defining moment or key decision when they took a significant risk and thereby experienced a breakthrough. -- Larry Osborne
Strings of coincidence can strengthen us in the determination to follow our deepest intuitions even when they run counter to conventional wisdom and logic and cannot be subjected to rational explanation. -- Robert Moss
[T]he myth that there was somehow a magic wand in the early 1980s to cure AIDS - a wand that Reagan deliberately refused to wave - is now almost conventional wisdom. -- Andrew Sullivan
The elderly have weathered enough squalls to know that this one, too, shall pass. They own the courage to be original; they've learned to hold their own values above the conventional wisdom. -- Sarah Ferguson
Here's conventional wisdom: Success makes you happy. Happiness permits you to be generous. In fact, it actually works like this: Generosity makes you happy. Happy people are more likely to be successful. -- Seth Godin
Conventional wisdom is not to put all of your eggs in one basket. 80/20 wisdom is to choose a basket carefully, load all your eggs into it, and then watch it like a hawk. -- Richard Koch
It is worth remembering one of the important lessons of the Buck story: a small number of zealous advocates can have an impact on the law that defies both science and conventional wisdom. -- Paul A. Lombardo
The conventional wisdom of fandom is that you must give your fans anything they want. But I've never felt that that's a healthy attitude - and that comes from being a Star Wars fan. -- DJ Shadow
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. -- Larry Ellison
When you find errors in conventional wisdom-when everyone says A and A is not true-you gain competitive advantage. Only a few times do you have to find errors in conventional wisdom to make a living. -- Larry Ellison
The problem in our society is the ego psychology and conventional wisdom about "look out for #1." That conventional wisdom thinks that "love your enemy" is to some a principle no one can ever live by. -- Robert Thurman

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