99 Conventional Ways Quotes

Following is our list of conventional ways quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about not conventional.

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Famous Conventional Ways Quotes

Conventional wisdom would have one believe. — Mumia Abu-Jamal

Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally. — John Maynard Keynes

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

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves. — Bertrand Russell

Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality. — Hannah Arendt

Few things in this world are more predictable than the reaction of conventional minds to unconventional ideas. — John Anthony West

The only way to get ahead is to find errors in conventional wisdom. - Larry Ellison

The only way to get ahead is to find errors in conventional wisdom. — Larry Ellison

Conventionality is not morality. — Charlotte Bronte

The way is long if one follows precepts, but short... if one follows patterns. — Seneca

Paradoxical, things that seem obvious, broad consensus — Howard Marks

Mainstream media tend to just mouth the conventional wisdom, to see everything through the filter of right and left. — Arianna Huffington

Failing conventionally is the route to go; as a group, lemmings may have a rotten image, but no individual lemming has ever received bad press — Warren Buffett

The key to success is to risk thinking unconventional thoughts. Convention is the enemy of progress. — Trevor Baylis

I'm a sworn enemy of convention. I despise the conventional in anything, even the arts. — Hedy Lamarr

Short Conventional Ways Quotes

  • As a rule, I am very careful to be shallow and conventional where depth and originality are wasted. — Lucy Maud Montgomery
  • Following the herd, average performance, extremes — Howard Marks
  • If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature's way. — Aristotle
  • Today's 'best practices' lead to dead ends; the best paths are new and untried. — Peter Thiel
  • In the final analysis, change sticks when it becomes the way we do things around here. — John P. Kotter
  • I break away from all conventions that do not lead to my earthly success and happiness. — Anton Szandor LaVey
  • Conservation is the application of common sense to the common problems for the common good. — Gifford Pinchot
  • Uncommon thinkers reuse what common thinkers refuse — J. R. D. Tata
  • God always takes the simplest way. — Albert Einstein
Conventional ways quote Sometimes the easiest way to solve a problem is to stop participating in the problem.
Sometimes the easiest way to solve a problem is to stop participating in the problem.

Conventional Wisdom Quotes

If you are buying into a vacuum of conventional wisdom... the potential to capitalize is enormous. — Cathie Wood

Conventional wisdom holds that motivation is the key to habit change. Maybe if you really wanted it, you'd actually do it. But the truth is, our real motivation is to be lazy and to do what is convenient. — James Clear

Establishing and maintaining an unconventional investment profile requires acceptance of uncomfortably idiosyncratic portfolios which frequently appear downright imprudent in the eyes of conventional wisdom. — Howard Marks

Conventional ways quote Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forwad for the trip.
Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forwad for the trip.

You have to be willing to question conventional wisdom and think for yourself. — Jim Simons

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

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

Conventional ways quote Life has a way of testing a person's will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having every
Life has a way of testing a person's will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen at once.

Potentially profitable, nonconsensus forecasts are very hard to believe in and act on for the simple reason that they are so far from conventional wisdom. — Howard Marks

The conventional wisdom is often wrong. — Steven Levitt

All new ideas begin in a non-conforming mind that questions some tenet of the conventional wisdom. — Hyman Rickover

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

Not Conventional Quotes

If at times my productions do not express the conventionally beautiful, there is always an effort to express the universal beauty of man's continuous struggle to lift his social position and to add dimension to his spiritual being. — Jacob Lawrence

Radical constructivism, thus, is radical because it breaks with convention and develops a theory of knowledge in which knowledge does not reflect an 'objective' ontological reality. — Paul Watzlawick

Cannabis is remarkably safe. Although not harmless, it is surely less toxic than most of the conventional medicines it could replace if it were legally available. Despite its use by millions of people over thousands of years, cannabis has never caused an overdose death. — Lester Grinspoon

Conventional ways quote No matter how many mistakes you make or how slow you progress. You're still way ahead of everyone wh
No matter how many mistakes you make or how slow you progress. You're still way ahead of everyone who isn't trying.

A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention. — Aldous Huxley

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own. — Aldous Huxley

Film noir is not a genre. It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood. It is a film 'noir', as opposed to the possible variants of film gray or film off-white. — Paul Schrader

Conventional ways quote Your heart knows the way. Run in that direction.
Your heart knows the way. Run in that direction.

What distinguishes the campaign finance issue from just about every other one being debated these days is that the two sides do not divide along conventional liberal/ conservative lines. — James L. Buckley

As long as people are going to call you lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention. — Gregory Maguire

A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. — James Madison

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. — Charlotte Bronte

Against Conventional Quotes

Adolescence can be a time of turmoil and turbulence, of stress and storm. Rebellion against authority and against convention is to be expected and tolerated for the sake of learning and growth. — Haim Ginott

You may confuse a lot of people when going against the grain of conventional thinking, and that's perfectly okay. — Lewis Howes

We are strange beings, we seem to go free, but we go in chains - chains of training, custom, convention, association, environment - in a word, Circumstance, and against these bonds the strongest of us struggle in vain. — Mark Twain

Conventional ways quote Every minute spent worrying about "The way thing were" is a moment stolen from creating the way thin
Every minute spent worrying about "The way thing were" is a moment stolen from creating the way things can be.

Sometimes God gives instructions that go against conventional wisdom, such as treating people kindly when they're hateful. Who really wants to do that? Instructions like that may not always make sense, so that's why I need to trust and obey the One who inspired them. — George Foreman

Poland is one of the few countries that can afford to conduct a conventional monetary policy and that means we have to act against the buildup of imbalances in the economy. — Marek Belka

Zen is the spirit of a man. Zen believes in his inner purity and goodness. Whatever is superadded or violently torn away, injures the wholesomeness of the spirit. Zen, therefore, is emphatically against all religious conventionalism. — D.T. Suzuki

Conventional ways quote Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the pas
Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future.

The anarchist painter is not the one who will create anarchist pictures, but the one who will fight with all his individuality against official conventions. — Paul Signac

If you are the kind of person who listens to conservative advice, you may do okay in life, but you probably won't ever be a fantastic leader. You have to take risks, and you also have to go against conventional wisdom, because conventional wisdom doesn't make for startling advances in society. — Ruth Simmons

Thus, anybody who follows this nature and gives way its states will be led into quarrels and conflicts, and go against the conventions and rules of society, and will end up a criminal. — Xunzi

There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far. — George Santayana

People Writing About Conventional Ways

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Howard Marks

Howard Marks
quotes on cycle, risk and investing

117 1
Read quotes by Mumia Abu-Jamal

Mumia Abu-Jamal
quotes on love, education and marriage

24 650
Read quotes by John Maynard Keynes

John Maynard Keynes
quotes on economics, capitalism and government intervention

214 2116
Read quotes by Richard Marcinko

Richard Marcinko
quotes on leadership, education and success

19 236
Read quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith
quotes on government, immigration and capitalism

393 2029
Read quotes by Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell
quotes on happiness, life and war

1131 8798

More Conventional Ways Quotes

On big issues like war in Iraq, but in many other issues they simply must be multilateral. There's no other way around. You have the instances like the global warming convention, the Kyoto protocol, when the U.S. went its own way. — Hans Blix

One of the more distasteful aspects of positive thinking – and of conventional approaches to happiness in general – is the way in which they seem to encourage self-absorption. — Oliver Burkeman

Conventional ways quote Don't waste your time looking back, you're not going that wa
Don't waste your time looking back, you're not going that way.

The absurd, with its rupture of rationality-of conventional ways of seeing the world-is in fact an accurate and a productive way of understanding the world. — William Kentridge

The sexual freedom of today for most people is really only a convention, an obligation, a social duty, a social anxiety, a necessary feature of the consumer's way of life. — Pier Paolo Pasolini

Conventional ways quote What's meant to be will always find its way. Always.
What's meant to be will always find its way. Always.

I see worries in the fact that we have the power to manipulate genes in ways that would be improbable or impossible through conventional evolution. We shouldn't be complacent in thinking that we can predict the results. — Colin Blakemore

I hope my message has at least jarred you into rethinking the standard and conventional approaches to living one’s life — get a good job, work hard through endless hours, and then retire in your sixties or seventies and live out your days in your so-called golden years. But I still ask you: Why wait until your health and life energy have begun to wane? Rather than just focusing on saving up for a big pot full of money that you will most likely not be able to spend in your lifetime, live your life to the fullest now. Chase memorable life experiences, give money to your kids when they can best use it, donate money to charity while you’re still alive. That’s the way to live life. Remember: In the end, the business of life is the acquisition of memories. So what are you waiting for? — Bill Perkins

I think generally people’s thinking process is too bound by convention or analogy to prior experiences. It’s rare that people try to think of something on a first principles basis. They’ll say, We’ll do that because it’s always been done that way. Or they’ll not do it because Well, nobody’s ever done that, so it must not be good. — Tim Urban

The 1928 Republican Convention opened with a prayer. If the Lord can see His way clear to bless the Republican Party the way it's been carrying on, then the rest of us ought to get it without even asking. — Will Rogers

Nintendo's way is to challenge conventional thinking. Not just for the sake of doing things differently, but to do things better. — Reggie Fils-Aime

Ordinary life bypassed me, but I also bypassed it. It couldn't have been any other way.Conventional life and conventional people are not for me. — Edna O'Brien

I'm a sworn enemy of convention. I despite the conventional in anything, even the arts. I paint canvasses on the floor and drove one art teacher out of his mind. But that's just the way I paint best. — Hedy Lamarr

In most instances, biotechnology, though a radically different approach, is a sustaining technology: It's a dramatically improved way of targeting problems that we hadn't been able to solve with the conventional approach of mainstream pharmaceutical companies. — Clayton Christensen

What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are "coins" for real things. — Alan Watts

If you free yourself from the conventional reaction to a quantity like a million years, you free yourself a bit from the boundaries of human time. And then in a way you do not live at all, but in another way you live forever. — John McPhee

Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom. — Sam Walton

One who aspires to greatness should read and study, pursuing the True Way with such a firm resolve that he is perfectly straightforward and open, rises above the superficialities of conventional behavior, and refuses to be satisfied with the petty or commonplace. — Yoshida Shoin

One needs to be successful in the conventional way to learn just how far away from success it may be. — Henry Ford

You don't do background music the way a lot of more conventional films do. The music is often kind of a character in your films to the extent that sometimes you stop and watch someone perform a song. — Wes Anderson

I think it's ridiculous that you need to look a certain way to be conventionally pretty. — Kristen Stewart

People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things. — Richard Buckminster Fuller

Art is not just ornamental, an enhancement of life. It is a path in itself, a way out of the predictable and conventional... a map to self discovery. — Gabrielle Roth

I had to teach myself to let go of the conventional rock way of playing guitar and singing. Some things you wouldn't expect to work, did and some things won't ever work. — Chris Cornell

I don't think Jimi committed suicide in the conventional way. He just decided to exit when he wanted to. — Eric Burdon

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that. — Richard P. Feynman

I THINK IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE CONVENTIONALLY ROMANTIC YOU'VE GOT TO GO ALL THE WAY: A BEAUTIFUL DINNER SOMEWHERE LOVELY, WITH BOAT-LOADS OF FLOWERS, CHOCOLATES AND CHAMPAGNE. BUT IT MIGHT ALSO BE NICE TO WRAP UP WARM AND SIT ON A ROOF SOMEWHERE, WITH A CUP OF HOT SOUP AND YOUR GIRL, WATCH THE PLANES COME IN OVER LONDON AND LISTEN TO THE NIGHT. — Tom Hiddleston

I am a traditionalist, I'm not a conventional person, but I am a traditionalist in the true form of the word, in that your heart is opening, you're absolutely there for everyone, the face of pain has no tradition, by the way, and in my tradition, a guru simply means the removal of darkness. — Maya Tiwari

Bound by conventions, people tend to reach for what is easy. Here we must be unafraid of what is difficult. For all living beings in nature must unfold in their particular way and become themselves despite all opposition. — Rainer Maria Rilke

In India, 'cold weather' is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy. — Mark Twain

Look, whenever I hear or read I’m beautiful, I simply don’t understand it … I’m certainly not beautiful in any conventional way. I didn't make my career on beauty. — Audrey Hepburn

You can't do the end of the world in a conventionally dramatic way or Boy Meets Girl way. — Terry Southern

Literature may make the reader reexamine some of his or her own conventions, look at himself or herself in a different way, look at others in a different way. This goes way beyond just making statements or manifesting principles. — Amos Oz

A bully has no respect for a weakling and the way to stop a bully is not to be weak. The way to stop a bully from ever being a bully is to say: "I'm as strong as you. Anything you do to me, I can do to you." We are going for nuclear and conventional disarmament but we're going about it in the right way. — Margaret Thatcher

Conventions are unstated agreements within a community to abide by a single way of doing things - not because there is any inherent advantage to the choice, but because there is an advantage to everyone making the same choice. — Steven Pinker

States are like people. They do not question the awful status quo until some dramatic event overturns the conventional and lax way of thinking. — Victor Davis Hanson

I think the country is very settled in a lot of ways, and we saw that after the Democratic Convention. I think a lot of the bump that we enjoyed came when John Kerry selected John Edwards as his running mate. — Harold Ford

I expect the Republicans will enjoy a large bounce out of their convention. They're here wrapping themselves in the 9/11 flag, which I think is inappropriate in many ways, but it's their choice. — Harold Ford

I've done a couple of fan conventions and [the fans] are legion. They're rather like Star Wars or Star Trek fans. We're very glad of the loyal fans - but it's a strange way to spend your life, dressing up like Star Wars. At least we change our costumes - I don't spend 40 years dressed up as Tywin Lannister. — Charles Dance

Tourism requires that you see conventional things, and that you see them in a conventional way. — Paul Fussell

Difficult times disrupt your conventional ways of thinking and push you to forge better habits of thought, performance and being. — Robin Sharma

No convention gets to be a convention at all except by grace of a lot of clever and powerful people first inventing it, and then imposing it on others. You can be pretty sure, if you are strictly conventional, that you are following genius--a long way off. And unless you are a genius yourself, that is a good thing to do. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

If we grow old wisely, we lay aside the senseless forms and meaningless conventions of society and go back to a more primitive mode of social intercourse, picking our friends the way children do, - because we like them, - spending time enough with them to get some real good out of them. — Mary Heaton Vorse

The people who do make big discoveries are the ones who somehow manage to free themselves from conventional ways of thinking and to see the subject from a new perspective. — Anthony James Leggett

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