Clinton is a big personality who has led a big life, and for some of the media conventional wisdom to boil it down to a view that 'all people are really interested in' are a few moments of madness in the Oval Office gets him, the importance of the presidency, and the significance of his life, all wrong.

Around '93, '94, the conventional wisdom about the Internet was that it was a toy for academics and researchers. So it was very, very underestimated for about two years.

To build a great company, which is a CEO's job, sometimes you have to stand up against conventional wisdom.

Analysts may be correct that the presidential election won't primarily turn on entitlements reform, but by choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate, Mitt Romney can, contrary to conventional wisdom, make it a winning issue and lay the foundation for a reform mandate when he wins.

There's the conventional wisdom, of which I have none, where you get a record deal, you get a publicist, you get a campaign, and you do the tour, but none of that adds up to things like nuance and subtlety and dynamic.

The most important lesson of New Labour is this: Every time we made progress we did it by challenging the conventional wisdom.

Mainstream media tend to just mouth the conventional wisdom, to see everything through the filter of right and left.

Conventional wisdom holds that setting a timetable for getting American troops out of Iraq would be a mistake.

I've always shied away from conventional wisdom, though I know the power of it.

Economists often like startling theorems, results which seem to run counter to conventional wisdom.

Many people have their reputations as reporters and analysts because they are on television, batting around conventional wisdom. A lot of these people have never reported a story.

I'm not a money manager, but I can tell you what the conventional wisdom is. The younger you are, the more risk you can take on.

Conventional wisdom suggests the primary motivator for entrepreneurs is money or wealth creation and, in fact, much of the political debate tends to center around what kind of tax or regulatory policy changes will turn corporate suits into small business adventurers overnight.

I think in conventional magazine wisdom, you need to have a redesign every decade or so.

The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.

Never accept ultimatums, conventional wisdom, or absolutes.

Most people see what they expect to see, what they want to see, what they've been told to see, what conventional wisdom tells them to see - not what is right in front of them in its pristine condition.

In the beginning, Adam was instructed to earn the bread by the sweat of his brow - not Eve. Contrary to conventional wisdom, a mother's place is in the home!

People always blame the girl; she should have said no. A monosyllable, but conventional wisdom has always been that boys can't manage it.

There was a period of 10 years where the conventional wisdom was Black shows don't sell overseas, therefore nobody is interested.

Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed levees and exploded the conventional wisdom about a shared American prosperity, exposing a group of people so poor they didn't have $50 for a bus ticket out of town. If we want to learn something from this disaster, the lesson ought to be: America's poor deserve better than this.

Doubt the conventional wisdom unless you can verify it with reason and experiment.

Influential people are never satisfied with the status quo. They're the ones who constantly ask, 'What if?' and 'Why not?' They're not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom, and they don't disrupt things for the sake of being disruptive; they do it to make things better.

I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.