Quotes on Being Different

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.

Let's stop 'tolerating' or 'accepting' difference, as if we're so much better for not being different in the first place. Instead, let's celebrate difference, because in this world it takes a lot of guts to be different.

In diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

Common sense means living in the world as it is today; but creative people are people who don't want the world as it is today but want to make another world.

I can't go back to yesterday - because I was a different person then.

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.

When everyone at school is speaking one language, and a lot of your classmates' parents also speak it, and you go home and see that your community is different -there is a sense of shame attached to that. It really takes growing up to treasure the specialness of being different.

Strategy is about setting yourself apart from the competition. It's not a matter of being better at what you do - it's a matter of being different at what you do.

Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value.

Do not cringe and make yourself small if you are called the black sheep, the maverick, the lone wolf. Those with slow seeing say that a noncomformist is a blight on society. But it has been proven over the centuries, that being different means standing at the edge, that one is practically guaranteed to make an original contribution, a useful and stunning contribution to her culture.

You cannot be all things to all people. Be unique. Be different. Give to others what you want yourself. And do what you were made to do.

One reason that the task of inventing manners is so difficult is that etiquette is folk custom, and people have emotional ties to the forms of their youth. That is why there is such hostility between generations in times of rapid change; their manners being different, each feels affronted by the other, taking even the most surface choices for challenges.

It’s really hard to hate someone for being different when you’re too busy laughing together.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.

As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has-or ever will have-something inside that is unique to all time.

Anytime we think the problem is 'out there,' that thought is the problem. We empower what's out there to control us. The change paradigm is 'outside-in' - what's out there has to change before we can change. The proactive approach is to change from the 'inside-out': to be different, and by being different, to effect positive change in what's out there - I can be more resourceful, I can be more diligent, I can be more creative, I can be more cooperative.

I always was a rebel...but on the other hand, I wanted to be loved and accepted...and not just be a loudmouth, lunatic, poet, musician. But I cannot be what I am not.

The only reason I am a star is because of my repression. Nothing else would have driven me through all that if I was 'normal'.

Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.

People have a problem with me being different, but that propels me forward in life.