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Conventional Wisdom Quotes

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Conventional Wisdom Quotes

“When your efforts run in the face of conventional wisdom and accepted mastery, persistence can look like madness. If you succeed in the end, this extreme originality reformulates into a new level of mastery, sometimes even genius; if you fail in the end, you remain a madman in the eyes of others, and maybe even yourself. When you are in the midst of the journey…there’s really no way of knowing which one you are.” (p.129)”

EffortJourneyGeniusMadnessPersistenceConventional WisdomMadmanAccepted MasteryExtreme Originality
Book:Artistry Unleashed: A Guide to Pursuing Great Performance in Work and Life
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“A good therapy helps you develop a sense of irony about your life so that when you start to repeat old and unhelpful patterns, something within you says, "There you go again; let's call this to a halt. You can do something different." Often the first step toward doing something different is developing the capacity to not act, to stay still and reflect.”

HumilityDiscipleshipAssumptionsConventional WisdomThought Life
Book:Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
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“The defining feature of world politics post the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) has been the rise of right-wing populists, who have disrupted politics. It wasn't meant to be this way. Conventional wisdom at the time was that the GFC would lead to the 'social democratic moment'. The theory went that in the aftermath of the GFC - an event which exposed the dangers of relentless deregulation and fuelled an already existing rise of inequality - progressive parties, with a preference for appropriately calibrated regulation and redistribution, would benefit. Like much conventional wisdom, reality proved otherwise. Instead, it's been the right-wing populists' moment. The charlatans' moment. First, they disrupted their own parties, then they disrupted politics more broadly. (p.14-15)”

InequalityRegulationConventional WisdomDeregulationSocial DemocracyWorld PoliticsRedistributionRight Wing PopulismGfc
Book:On Charlatans
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“It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will to doubt can be just as powerfully sapped by an internal sense that societal conventions must have a sound basis, even if we are not sure exactly what this may be, because they have been adhered to by a great many people for a long time. It seems implausible that our society could be gravely mistaken in its beliefs, and at the same time, that we would be alone in noticing the fact. We stifle our doubts, and follow the flock, because we cannot conceive of ourselves as pioneers of hitherto unknown difficult truths. It is for help in overcoming our meekness that we can turn to the philosopher.”

PhilosophyCourageDoubtPhilosophy Of LifeConformityQuestioningStatus QuoConventional WisdomConvention
Author:Alain de Botton
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“The witch-hunt narrative is now the conventional wisdom about these cases. That view is so widely endorsed and firmly entrenched that so widely endorsed and firmly entrenched that there would seem to be nothing left to say about these cases. But a close examination of the witch hunt canon leads to some unsettling questions: Why is there so little in the way of academic scholarship about these cases? Almost all of the major witch-hunt writings have been in magazines, often without any footnotes to verify or assess the claims made. Why hasn't anyone writing about these cases said anything about how difficult they are to research? There are so many roadblocks and limitations to researching these cases that it would seem incumbent on any serious writer to address the limitations of data sources. Many of these cases seem to have been researched in a manner of days or weeks. Nevertheless, the cases are described in a definitive way that belies their length and complexity, along with the inherent difficulty in researching original trial court documents. This book is based on the first systematic examination of court records in these cases.”

MediaEvidenceCourtWitnessSpeculationSexual AbuseRumorChild Sexual AbuseMisinformationConventional WisdomMedia ManipulationTrialChild RapeDisinformationWitch Hunt1980sWitchhuntChild MolestersUrban Myth
Book:The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children
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“The author brings to the table a healthy skepticism of the conventional wisdom, an admirable ability to separate fact from fancy, and an undisguised repugnance for the mumbo-jumbo that's the curse of so much commentary on anything to do with economics or investment. A World of Wealth is not only a lively read, but an exceptionally enlightening and rewarding one to boot.”

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Author:Alan Abelson
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“The intricate and different life cycles of both male and female root-heads, and the great behavioral sophistication shown by the female in reconfiguring a host crab as a support system, all underscore the myopia of our conventional wisdom in regarding rhizocephalans as degenerate parasites because the adult anatomy of internal roots and external sac seem so simple.”

DifferentSeemsSimpleSupportAdultsFemaleRootsMalesInternalsCyclesHostConventionalAnatomyIntricateDegeneratesSophisticationParasitesConventional WisdomCrabsSupport SystemsDifferent LifeMyopia
Book:Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms
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“Obama is very much an establishment sort of guy. The whole image of him as a transcendent figure was based on style rather than substance. If you actually looked at what he said, not how he said it, he said very establishment things. He's a moderate, cautious, ameliorative guy. He tends to gravitate toward Beltway conventional wisdom.”

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Author:Paul Krugman
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“After listening to the debate on unemployment I can see a danger that Liberals lose to the Tories their claim to have new and sensible ideas and are left saying "Me too" to a Socialist conventional wisdom which is failing. The salient need of this country to produce more and much more efficiently hardly figured on the agenda.”

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Author:Jo Grimond
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“The conventional wisdom is often wrong. Crime didn't keep soaring in the 1990s, money alone doesn't win elections, and - surprise - drinking eight glasses of water a day has never actually been shown to do a thing for your health. Conventional wisdom is often shoddily formed and devilishly difficult to see through, but it can be done.”

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Author:Malcolm Gladwell
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“The conventional wisdom is - people say this all the time - you should only write something when you're far enough away from it that you can have a perspective. But that's not true. That's a story that you're telling. The truth of it is here, right now. It's the only truth that we ever know. And I'm interested in that truth and the confusion being part of the experience and sorting it your way through and figuring it out.”

PeopleKnowsWayShouldWritingEnoughStoriesPerspectiveRight NowConfusionTelling The TruthConventionalConventional WisdomSortingFiguring It
Author:Charlie Kaufman
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“Trading has taught me not to take the conventional wisdom for granted. What money I made in trading is testimony to the fact that the majority is wrong a lot of the time. The vast majority is wrong even more of the time. I've learned that markets, which are often just mad crowds, are often irrational; when emotionally overwrought, they're almost always wrong.”

MadeFactsTaughtMadMajorityCrowdsGrantedI've LearnedConventionalIrrationalTestimonyTradingConventional WisdomAlways Wrong
Author:Richard Dennis
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“The rules your parents teach you to live by are very different than the rules the world actually runs by. Most of the conventional wisdom is not only wrong, it's a lie told to us by people who want to control us. It doesn't help us, it helps them. Pretty much everything we're told as children (and adults, really) by the established power structures in our lives are made up fairytales us to reinforce that control: Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy, fat-free frozen dinners, religion, and metering lights on the highway--the list goes on”

PeopleWorldWantChildrenMadeDifferentHelpingLightRunningLyingParentTeachOur LivesGoes OnAdultsStructureDinnerListsTeethFatsFairyLive ByConventionalEasterFrozenHighwaysSantaFairytaleSanta ClausBunniesConventional WisdomTooth FairyEaster Bunny
Book:Hilarity Ensues
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“Whats 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. Its all part of the suffocating spin cycle were in. In media, politics and publishing, the conventional wisdom is to play to this base.”

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Author:John Avlon
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“The line that I am urging as today's conventional wisdom is not a denial of consciousness. It is often called, with more reason, arepudiation of mind. It is indeed a repudiation of mind as a second substance, over and above body. It can be described less harshly as an identification of mind with some of the faculties, states, and activities of the body. Mental states and events are a special subclass of the states and events of the human or animal body.”

MindHumansStatesReasonBodyTodayLinesAnimalConsciousnessSpecialEventsActivityDenialSubstanceMaterialismFacultyConventionalIdentificationConventional Wisdom
Author:Willard Van Orman Quine
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“Millions of mutual-fund investors sleep well at night, serene in the belief that superior outcomes result from pooling funds with like-minded investors and engaging high-quality investment managers to provide professional insight. The conventional wisdom ends up hopelessly unwise, as evidence shows an overwhelming rate of failure by mutual funds to deliver on promises.”

WellsEndsShowsNightBeliefSleepResultsQualityMillionsPromiseEvidenceInvestmentRateInvestingInsightSuperiorsManagersOutcomesFundMutualOverwhelmingInvestorsConventionalEngagingSereneHigh QualityConventional WisdomUnwiseMutual FundSleep Well
Author:David F. Swensen
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“Active management strategies demand uninstitutional behavior from institutions, creating a paradox that few can unravel. Establishing and maintaining an unconventional investment profile requires acceptance of uncomfortably idiosyncratic portfolios, which frequently appear downright imprudent in the eyes of conventional wisdom.”

ThinkingEyeAcceptanceDemandBehaviorCreatingIndependentManagementInstitutionsStrategyInvestmentInvestingActiveParadoxConventionalMaintainingProfilePortfoliosConventional WisdomUnconventionalIndependent ThinkingActive Management
Book:Pioneering Portfolio Management: An Unconventional Approach to Institutional Investment, Fully Revised and Updated
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“I don't think that split government is a good idea. Conventional wisdom in Washington for years has been that divided government is good because of a check and a balance. What I believe happens all too often, regardless of which party is there's gridlock. And I think the better argument is give one party a chance, give them a chance with a House and a Senate and a president. Give them a few years to see what they can do. And if you don't like it, put another party in.”

IfsThinkingGivingYearsBelieveHas BeensIdeasGovernmentHappensHouseI BelievePresidentCan DoChancePartyBalanceArgumentChecksDividedGood IdeasSenateSplitsConventionalConventional WisdomGridlockDivided Government
Author:Scott Walker
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“A well-functioning democracy has a culture of free speech, not simply legal protection of free speech. It encourages independence of mind. It imparts a willingness to challenge prevailing opinion through both words and deeds. Equally important, it encourages a certain set of attitudes in listeners, one that gives a respectful hearing to those who do not embrace the conventional wisdom. In a culture of free speech, the attitude of listeners is no less important than that of speakers.”

GivingMindWellsImportantCertainCultureChallengesAttitudeOpinionDemocracySpeechIndependenceEmbraceDeedsHearingProtectionWillingnessSpeakersFree SpeechConventionalListenersRespectfulImpartPrevailingDemocracies HaveConventional Wisdom
Author:Cass Sunstein
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