74. I strongly agree that rule-breakers are the most memorable1 people. By departing
from the status quo, iconoclasts2 call attention to themselves, some providing
conspicuous3 mirrors for society, others serving as our primary catalysts4 for progress.
In politics, for example, rule-breakers Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King
secured prominent places in history by challenging the status quo through civil
disobedience. Renegades such as Ghengus Khan, Stalin, and Hussein, broke all the
human-rights rules, thereby5 leaving indelible marks in the historical record. And
future generations will probably remember Nixon and Kennedy more clearly than
Carter or Reagan, by way of their rule-breaking activitiesspecifically, Nixon's
Watergate debacle and Kennedy's extra-marital trysts6.
In the arts, mavericks7 such as Dali, Picasso, and Warhol, who break established
rules of composition, ultimately emerge as the greatest artists, while the names of artists
with superior technical skills are relegated8 to the footnotes of art-history textbooks. Our
most influential9 popular musicians are the flagrant rule breakersfor example, be-bop
musicians such as Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk10, who broke all the harmonic
rules, and folk musician-poet Bob Dylan, who broke the rules for lyrics11.
In the sciences, innovation and progress can only result from challenging
conventional theoriesi.e., by breaking rules. Newton and Einstein, for example, both
refused to blindly accept what were perceived at their time as certain rules of physics.
As a result, both men redefined those rules, and both men emerged as two of the most
memorable figures in the field of physics.
In conclusion, it appears that the deepest positive and negative impressions appear
on either side of the same iconoclastic12 coin. Those who leave the most memorable
imprints13 in history do so by challenging norms, traditions, cherished values, and the
general status quothat is, by breaking the rules.
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