I just do my work, and I work every day, and my ambition is just to do something better than I last did.
Patti SmithRead
Both of them were ahead of their time, but they didn't live long enough to see the time they were ahead of.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the tragedy of visionary thinkers who die before their ideas are appreciated.
Patti Smith's quote highlights the paradox of genius that often goes unrecognized during its time. It suggests that some individuals possess insights or creativity that surpass the understanding of their contemporaries, and unfortunately, they may not live to witness a world that embraces their contributions. This underlines a common theme in history where great minds often struggle for acknowledgment until much later.
Themes
VisionaryTimelinessCreativityRecognitionGenius
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about innovation, I could use this quote to emphasize the importance of recognizing new ideas.
More from Patti Smith
All quotes βMy small torrent of words dissipated into an elaborate sense of expanding and receding. It was my entrance into the radiance of imagination. This process was especially magnified within the fevers of influenza, measles, chickenpox, and mumps. I got them all and with each I was privileged with a new level of awareness. Lying deep within myself, the symmetry of a snowflake spinning above me, intensifying through my lids, I seized a most worthy souvenir, a shard of heavenβs kaleidoscope.
Patti SmithRead
For everything bad, there's a million really exciting things, whether it's someone puts out a really great book, there's a new movie, there's a new detective, the sky is unbelievably golden, or you have the best cup of coffee you ever had in your life.
Patti SmithRead
Eyeing the traffic circulating the lobby hung with bad art. Big invasive stuff unloaded on Stanley Bard in exchange for rent. The hotel is an energetic, desperate haven for scores of gifted hustling children from every rung of the ladder. Guitar bums and stoned-out beauties in Victorian dresses. Junkie poets, playwrights, broke-down filmmakers, and French actors. Everybody passing through here is somebody, if not in the outside world.
Patti SmithRead
I've always felt outside of things; I've always felt different.
Patti SmithRead
No matter what anybody thinks about any of them, every record I've done has been done with the same amount of care, anguish, pain, suffering, and joy.
Patti SmithRead
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