No assumption should go unchallenged! No strange idea should be dismissed or ignored! (And the stranger who presents it should be welcomed rather than scorned!) Our schools breed conformity. (Conforming students.) Our white-collar prisons, those insipid high rises that mark most big-city skylines, cherish conformity. (Conforming workers.) And yet historyʼs progress—from the dawn of civilization until today—is measured and marked by the assaults of non-conformists: from politics to science to enterprise. By definition, the history book is a Deviantʼs Hall of Fame. (And indeed, upon occasion…Hall of Shame.) A Museum of Misfits. My goal is to entrench the ethos of the history makers into our public and private institutions, small and large, as we face decades upon decades of unprecedented uncertainty and turmoil. Highest accolades should go to those who have the guts to hire the Deviants. And Gold Stars for all who openly challenge the status quo—day after day after daunting day.
Tom Peters - from his booklet "This I Believe"
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