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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 activities—specifically, 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 breakers—for 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 theories—i.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 quo—that is, by breaking the rules. 点击收听单词发音
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