CONVENTIONAL
-adjective
Ordinary rather than different or original.
It’s interesting – I set out looking up “convention” – I was particularly looking for thoughts on two opposing viewpoints concerning convention: 1) the practice of hunkering down and following past conventions for purposes of maintaining the peace, and following tried and true practices because they’ve proven to be successful. 2) The practice of shunning past conventions because of the threat of staleness, repetition and stagnancy – the policy of experimenting simply because you can and should. I was thinking of posting a handful of quotes supporting both points, because it’s an interesting struggle for balance – one that I think a lot of artists in every field deal with regularly!
What I found was that I had a hard time finding quotes supporting viewpoint #1. This surprised me, I expected to find more support for maintaining conventions because, well, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it! Instead I found mostly quotes supporting the “boldness” of skirting convention. While I’m not surprised that this is a popular thing, I also think that the lack of popular quotes and references to sticking with convention is because sticking with convention isn’t as “sexy” as “boldly going where no one has gone before”…
So, since i couldn’t find any “Stick to convention” quotes to form a balanced, thoughtful, debate-inducing post… I’m just going to post some of the quotes that I found and like! 🙂
“Create a vision and never let the environment, other people’s beliefs, or the limits of what has been done in the past shape your decisions. Ignore conventional wisdom.”
-Anthony Robbins
“The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.”
-John Kenneth Galbraith
“A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.” Â
-Aldous Huxley
“People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things.”
-R. Buckminster Fuller
Tony Caselli 
See, you say Convention and I think sci-fi…
*laughing*
Excellent! Are you going to the San Diego Comic Con this July? I debated, but bought an iPad instead! 🙂
I went to Comic-Con once and that was three times plenty for me. Too many people, too little crowd control. Besides, I’ve already had two cons this year and I’ve a conference, though not another convention, yet to come.
Hee! I had a great time when I went a few years ago, I’m hoping to go back before too long! I agree, though, it’s a LOT of people to navigate! I’ve never gone to any of the others – maybe I should investigate!