Quotes about Conventionality

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.

Conventional opinion is the ruin of our souls.

Those who dismiss "revisionist" qualms about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as indulgences in peace-time sentimentality must count President Truman's own Chief of Staff among the bleeding hearts: "It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons. . . . The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion , and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children. We were the first to have this weapon in our possession, and the first to use it. There is a practical certainty that potential enemies will have it in the future and that atomic bombs will some time be used against us."

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

Abstention from labor is the conventional evidence of wealth and is therefore the conventional mark of social standing.

The success and ultimately the survival of every business, large or small, depends in the last analysis on its ability to develop people. This ability is not measured by any of our conventional yardsticks of economic success; yet, is the final measurement.

Men have, for the most part, done with lamenting their lost faith. Sentimental tears over the happy, simple Christendom of their fathers are a thing of the past. They are proclaiming now their contempt for Christ's character, and their disgust at the very name of love. Scorn and hatred, difference and division, must be more than ever our lot, if we would be the followers of Christ in these days. Conventional religion and polite unbelief are gone forever.

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.

Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.

I have often pondered over the roles of knowledge or experience, on the one hand, and imagination or intuition, on the other, in the process of discovery. I believe that there is a certain fundamental conflict between the two, and knowledge, by advocating caution, tends to inhibit the flight of imagination. Therefore, a certain naivete, unburdened by conventional wisdom, can sometimes be a positive asset.

To this day the more conventional biologists suffer from an obsessional fear of anthropomorphism, and even put such words as "hunger" and "fear" between quotes (a literary solecism in any case) when writing about animals. The quotes are a way of saying "I cannot get on without Anthropomorphism, but I am ashamed to be seen with her in public".

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

Reber [Johnson; a violinist] also got off another one, after I'd played over the Second Violin Sonata for him-that harmless piece. "After stuff like that"-he said-"if you consider that music, and like it, how can you like Brahms or any good music?" That is a very common attitude among almost all the well known lilies. They take it [i.e., that attitude] for granted-a kind of self-evident axiom, a settled-for-life matter, ipso facto, admitting of no argument. The classical is good for all time, the modern is bad for all time-so if you like one, you can't like the other. Describing the reaction of a typical professional musician to his, and other twentieth-century, compositions. "Lilies" was one of Ives' names for most of the concert goers of his era, who expected all music to be conventional and pretty.

A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge.

When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman.

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

It will be a pity if women in the more conventional mould are to be phased out, for there will never be anyone to go home to.

USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion.

The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work.