Contrarian Quotes

“I swim against the tide because I like to annoy.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Angel's Game

“Let’s watch out for the unpredictability and the wildcat jumps of contrarian people, whose sole interests are soaring targets at high-speed, at all costs and without any consideration. Perceptive understanding may help us discover the hidden actualities behind the ‘appearances’. .("Mama. Meine Bäume wachsen bis in den Himmel")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“The Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat:
If you offer him pheasant he would rather have grouse.
If you put him in a house he would much prefer a flat,
If you put him in a flat then he'd rather have a house.
If you set him on a mouse then he only wants a rat,
If you set him on a rat then he'd rather chase a mouse.
Yes the Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat -
And there isn't any call for me to shout it:
For he will do
As he do do
And there's no doing anything about it!”
― T.S. Eliot, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

“Try your hardest to combat atrophy and routine. To question The Obvious and the given is an essential element of the maxim 'de omnius dubitandum' [All is to be doubted].”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

“I've never walked the same path other people found comfortable and I'm not going to start now.”
― Lora Leigh, Forbidden Pleasure

“One must avoid snobbery and misanthropy. But one must also be unafraid to criticise those who reach for the lowest common denominator, and who sometimes succeed in finding it. This criticism would be effortless if there were no "people" waiting for just such an appeal. Any fool can lampoon a king or a bishop or a billionaire. A trifle more grit is required to face down a mob, or even a studio audience that has decided it knows what it wants and is entitled to get it. And the fact that kings and bishops and billionaires often have more say than most in forming appetites and emotions of the crowd is not irrelevant, either.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

“He was a conservative all right, but invariably he gave the impression that he was a conservative because he was surrounded by liberals; that he had been a revolutionist if that had been required in order to be socially disruptive.”
― William F. Buckley, God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom'

“Defending unpopular positions is what lawyers do”
― Paul Clement

“Cultivo o ódio à acção como uma flor de estufa. Gabo-me para comigo da minha dissidência da vida.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“The inclinations of our will determine the types actions that we choose.”
― S J Contreras, The Becoming of Anton the Spider - Volume One (Gold Edition): Volume One (Gold Edition)

“I have long been moved by Rosa Luxemburg's assertion that 'freedom is always the freedom to think otherwise,' and thus I've been attracted to contrarians, to people whose instinct is to go against the grain of officially accredited views - especially those accredited within their own circle of progressive thinkers. This has its dangers, to be sure.”
― Robert Boyers, The Tyranny of Virtue: Identity, the Academy, and the Hunt for Political Heresies

“I am like the salmon- i have to go against the stream- i have to.”
― Knut Hamsun

“I am like the salmon- i have to swim against the current- i have to.”
― Knut Hamsun

“Nothing true requires belief.”
― Christopher Volkay

“A founder isn't blinded by the conventional wisdom of the present, they've recognised the patterns of the past and see the clues to the future, now”
― Henry Joseph-Grant

“.Do not think that by working super hard even on vacations or weekends, you are somehow showing your dedication. You are only setting yourself up to be taken for granted, given more work and ruining your mental and physical well-being.

If you don’t set your boundaries, don’t be upset when nobody else respects them. They don’t even know they exist.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“People often glorify delayed gratification. While delayed gratification can be a virtue sometimes, we often forget that the most precious asset we have is not money but time. The time that goes by today can never ever return. Much of your life will be directed towards achievement but just remember even an achievement filled life is quite wasted if you can’t spare time to enjoy it and spend time with loved ones while you still can.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Who the heck is the society to decide that what you do for a living has to necessarily be painful so that you have a “right” to enjoy your time later?

Who said you have to hate Monday to Friday so that you get a right to enjoy Saturday and Sunday? It’s nothing but a myth that we all have bought into. There is no concept Monday to Friday for work and a Saturday/Sunday off in nature. It is simply something we all bought into and our education system perpetuates as well.

And because we bought into that myth, we also trapped ourselves in careers that we genuinely hate”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Playing not to lose is a perfectly good way of playing. We have always been taught, play to win. But winning is not 100 percent in your hands. Sometimes it is easier to minimize your losses rather than get a guaranteed win.”
― Anubhav Srivastava

“Conventional wisdom says that positive thinking is the key to success. You need to picture yourself or visualize for yourself the perfect outcome, the best possible result. You need to go into what you are doing with an absolutely positive mindset, whether it is a presentation, a job interview, a date, or a much bigger project as if nothing could go wrong.

While positive thinking has always been preached, it has gained much more popularity recently thanks to the books that talk about the Law of Attraction as if it is a scientific law that always works. I am here to tell you that if you are always thinking positive and have been indoctrinated by the positive thinking mantras, believing that nothing could go wrong, you are dramatically lowering your chances of success, because in real life things go wrong all the time.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Motivational Gurus often ask people their 5-year goals, 10-year goals or even 20-year goals. Those who can’t answer that are considered aimless. We are given the illusion that we can plan out our entire life with extreme precision. You couldn’t be more wrong. Life is not a game of chess where you can plan all your moves ahead or have a backup move for everything. There are countless forces influencing what happens to you.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“For an organization with ample resources that is dependent on multiple individuals, goal setting is incredibly powerful.
For individuals themselves though, long term goal setting is more of a recipe for frustration and burnout, especially if they are goals not within your direct control and your self-worth is tied to that goal.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“You may set out with the goal of becoming a billionaire or a Nobel Prize winning Scientist or Author within the next 20 years. But most of the times, life will throw a curve ball at you that may displace all your plans.

Your business ventures that you thought would work out exceedingly well and become your stepping stone to becoming a billionaire may become a super flop and leave you with a huge debt instead.

The miraculous scientific discoveries you intend to make to win the Nobel Prize may never come across your way. You may make discoveries that are not that important or someone else who is much better funded may beat you to it.

You may experience a personal tragedy which leaves you extremely disadvantaged.

You may experience unexpected immediate responsibilities that may throw you off course of your goal. For example, a serious medical condition or the death of a family member.

The world may not reward your actions the way you expected.

What happens to your twenty-year goal? Nothing, it goes down the drain.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Why Long Term Goal Setting is Largely Pointless.

Desires change, motivations change. What you wanted the most in high school is probably not what you wanted the most 10 years after that. In high school, being popular with the opposite sex and trying to look cool was probably the number one priority. After ten years, the number one priority is to probably get a good job or have a stable income. And if you have that, to find the right relationship for life. Twenty years after high school, it is probably to see your Kids do well in school and so on.

Having a dream that you desire with the same extreme intensity as you desired it when you were 16 is possible but uncommon. Most of the times, you will realize that you probably don’t desire it after twenty or if you do, you probably don’t care AS much as you used to.

How can a fire keep on raging once the fuel is burnt up? How can anything be accomplished if the burning desire to achieve it is no longer there after a long stretch of time?

And there is nothing wrong with wanting something else after twenty years. That’s human nature. You don’t have to keep slogging on for something that you don’t care about.

The point is this is why super long term individualistic goals can sometimes get vague and pointless because you may realize midway that you don’t even care about them anymore.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Goal Setting is propagated by modern society as some kind of panacea or solution for overcoming any life obstacle. The problem is most of the popular advice that modern society gives you is either wrong or consists of half-truths at best.

I reiterate, that as individuals, it is better NOT to set Goals that obsessively focus on the RESULTS you are going to achieve, especially in areas where the outcome is inherently unpredictable and out of your control. Those goals will only stress you out and do more harm than good in the long run.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“If a group or an organization can work like a machine with access to plenty of resources and has no bias towards negative emotions, goal setting can STILL be useful.

As individuals though, our lives are highly unpredictable and we have a huge tendency towards being overly emotional about the result. The wrong result can put you into a deep depression, and the rare, “right result” inflate your ego far more than it is good for you, and eventually mess up your life anyway.

Let me explain even further. A machine or a crane can work for far more hours, with far more power at a far more efficient pace than any human without getting tired, getting hungry, getting restless or feeling frustrated. Can a human do it? NO! Because we are built differently! The same kind of outcome driven goal setting that may work for organizations is usually a terrible idea for individuals.

Here is what you should remember - If you are setting goals, especially goals where the results depend greatly on factors outside your control, the only ones you should set are the ones that focus on the ACTIONS you will take.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Life often tricks you into believing that you can only be happy when you accomplish something. The problem is accomplishing some goals is not totally under your control and even if you accomplish them, sometimes they may not give you the happiness you think you will get.

For example, you may achieve what you were looking for, but in the obsession for finding happiness in the future, you may very well ruin everything good that you have today including health, relationships and peace of mind. How can you anyway enjoy any of your "success" without those three things?

So, stop believing that happiness lies at the end of the tunnel. Instead try to cultivate happiness in the process, regardless of the result. This way, whether you succeed or fail, everything will still be worth it.

Here's a hard truth. Almost no one really cares about you, so make sure you start caring for yourself!”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“We judge them by calling "negative", "pessimistic" or "glass is half empty" kinds of people. What we don't see is that it's not entirely someone's fault that they see they become cynical about life. Nobody is a born pessimist. Every single baby, whether human or non-human, starts off their journey in this world as an optimist and filled with hope, it is what they encounter in life as they grow older that either keeps them positive or slowly turns them negative.”
― Anubhav Srivastava

“Sometimes the solution we were looking for is right next to us and it is far simpler than we thought. But we make it more complex than it really is.

Sometimes, we are so focused on looking so far away for a solution, that we ignore the appropriate solution that is right in front of us.

If you have a goal and you encounter obstacles or walls, You don’t need to break every wall that comes your way!! Sometimes you can just walk around the wall. Some people wanting to keep banging their head against the wall, not knowing there is a way around it. Or maybe there is a door in the wall or maybe there is a way to climb. Be persistent, but be informed. Keep pushing on towards your goal but adapt if things aren’t working and look for the simplest solution (By simple I don’t mean illegal).

You can tackle complex problems but remember, not every complex problem requires a complex solution.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Meanwhile the ceaseless requirements of the entertainment industry also threaten to deprive us other forms of critical style and of the means of appreciating them. To be called 'satirical' or 'ironic,' is now to be patronized in a different way. The satirist is the fast-talking cynic, and the ironist merely sarcastic or self-conscious and wised up. When a precious and irreplacable word like 'irony' has become a lazy synonym for 'anomie,' there is scant room for originality.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian