Square Peg Round Hole Quotes

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Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
Steve Jobs
You'd be surprised how many people violate this simple principle every day of their lives and try to fit square pegs into round holes, ignoring the clear reality that Things Are As They Are.
Benjamin Hoff (The Tao of Pooh)
Autists are the ultimate square pegs, and the problem with pounding a square peg into a round hole is not that the hammering is hard work. It's that you're destroying the peg.
Paul Collins
But then I have always been somewhat of a square peg in a round hole.
Cressida Cowell (How to Speak Dragonese (How to Train Your Dragon, #3))
He’s not your typical prince, more like a square peg in a round hole, kind of like me. He’s the sort of guy who wouldn’t mind reading side by side on a date.
Jodi Picoult (Between the Lines (Between the Lines, #1))
Round pegs in square holes tend to have dangerous thoughts about the social system and tend to infect others with their discontents.
Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)
People going in the wrong direction will get like that. Round pegs just don't fit in square holes.
J.R. Ward (Lover Mine (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #8))
Language is the square hole we keep trying to jam the round peg of life into. It's the most insane thing we do.
Robert Coover (Gerald's Party (Coover, Robert))
...you'd be surprised how many people violate this simple principle every day of their lives and try to fit square pegs into round holes, ignoring the clear reality that Things Are As They Are. We will let a selection from the writings of Chuang-tse illustrate: Hui-tse said to Chuang-tse, "I have a large tree which no carpenter can cut into lumber. Its branches and trunk are crooked and tough, covered with bumps and depressions. No builder would turn his head to look at it. Your teachings are the same - useless, without value. Therefore, no one pays attention to them." ... "You complain that your tree is not valuable as lumber. But you could make use of the shade it provides, rest under its sheltering branches, and stroll beneath it, admiring its character and appearance. Since it would not be endangered by an axe, what could threaten its existence? It is useless to you only because you want to make it into something else and do not use it in its proper way.
Benjamin Hoff (The Tao of Pooh)
Over the years most of my peers had come to hate me—I never understood why. I guess I was just different and, like dogs, they could smell it. So I never had many friends.
Sol Luckman (Beginner's Luke (Beginner's Luke, #1))
When we learn to work with our own Inner Nature, and with the natural laws operating around us, we reach the level of Wu Wei. Then we work with the natural order of things and operate on the principle of minimal effort. Since the natural world follows that principle, it does not make mistakes. Mistakes are made–or imagined–by man, the creature with the overloaded Brain who separates himself from the supporting network of natural laws by interfering and trying too hard. When you work with Wu Wei, you put the round peg in the round hole and the square peg in the square hole. No stress, no struggle. Egotistical Desire tries to force the round peg into the square hole and the square peg into the round hole. Cleverness tries to devise craftier ways of making pegs fit where they don’t belong. Knowledge tries to figure out why round pegs fit into round holes, but not square holes. Wu Wei doesn’t try. It doesn’t think about it. It just does it. And when it does, it doesn’t appear to do much of anything. But Things Get Done. When you work with Wu Wei, you have no real accidents. Things may get a little Odd at times, but they work out. You don’t have to try very hard to make them work out; you just let them. [...] If you’re in tune with The Way Things Work, then they work the way they need to, no matter what you may think about it at the time. Later on you can look back and say, "Oh, now I understand. That had to happen so that those could happen, and those had to happen in order for this to happen…" Then you realize that even if you’d tried to make it all turn out perfectly, you couldn’t have done better, and if you’d really tried, you would have made a mess of the whole thing. Using Wu Wei, you go by circumstances and listen to your own intuition. "This isn’t the best time to do this. I’d better go that way." Like that. When you do that sort of thing, people may say you have a Sixth Sense or something. All it really is, though, is being Sensitive to Circumstances. That’s just natural. It’s only strange when you don’t listen.
Benjamin Hoff (The Tao of Pooh)
Liberty to be inefficient and miserable. Freedom to be a round peg in a square hole.
Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)
Freedom to be a round peg in a square hole.
Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)
Unless the hole is MEANT to be square,' I said with a sudden erudition that surprised me, 'in which case, all the round pegs are the ones that are wrong, and if the ROUND hole is one that is not meant to be square, then the square ones will, no, hang on--' 'Shame,' said the historian, 'and you were doing so well.
Jasper Fforde (Shades of Grey (Shades of Grey, #1))
You mean,' Captain Penderton said, 'that any fulfilment obtained at the expense of normalcy is wrong, and should not be allowed to bring happiness. In short, it is better, because it is morally honourable, for the square peg to keep scraping around the round hole rather than to discover and use the unorthodox square that would fit?'…'I don't agree
Carson McCullers (Reflections in a Golden Eye)
I shove round pegs in square holes.
Aaron Dennis
I’m a perfectly normal Aspie girl. I just feel broken because I’m trying to fit into a nonautistic world. I’m a square peg trying to squeeze myself into a round hole.
Jen Wilde
I spent many years being a square peg and trying to bash myself into a round hole.
Rosie Weldon (My autistic fight song: My battle into adulthood and the workplace (Dear series))
For every round peg society forces into a square hole, another brick is laid, building the walls that will eventually close us off from the possibility of living with purpose and passion.
Kathryn Perez (Letters Written in White)
And yet, you’d be surprised how many people violate this simple principle every day of their lives and try to fit square pegs into round holes, ignoring the clear reality that Things Are As They Are.
Lao Tzu (The Tao of Pooh)
These kinder and gentler people never really cared much for individuals. They were too interested in the big-picture issues of the day, forcing square reality pegs into the round theoretical holes of how the world was supposed
Tom Clancy (Dead or Alive (Jack Ryan Jr., #2))
So you're the reason Qhuinn was in such a bad mood tonight." "It's got nothing to do with me. Qhuinn is usually in a bad mood." "People going in the wrong direction will get like that. Round pegs just dont fit in square holes.
J.R. Ward
The lonesome dark. That's what Jack called a night like this. When you were distanced from everything and everybody. Out on your own and there was nobody to care if you were happy or sad. If you lived or died. The lonesome dark hadn't existed in the old days. That was something people invented. Like time. Parcel up the days, parcel up the seasons. Add a minute here, a day there when it doesn't quite fit. Trim the square peg so that you could slide it into the round hole. In the old days the night was as open as the day. It wasn't a better place to hide because there was nothing to hide from. You weren't outside because there was no in.
Charles de Lint (Someplace to Be Flying (Newford, #5))
There was something called liberalism (...) Liberty to be inefficient and miserable. Freedom to be a round peg in a square hole.
Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)
When we can’t fit a square peg into a round hole, we’ll usually blame the peg—when
Nate Silver (The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't)
Rather, there is friction between the speaker’s square peg and the listener’s round hole, and that friction itself conveys information in a parallel stream.
Steven Pinker (The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature)
She’s too much like him in temperament. Married couples should complement each other, and not merely double their losses. There’s much to be said for the square peg in the round hole, as the Cubist told the Vorticist.
Robertson Davies (Leaven of Malice (Salterton Trilogy, #2))
When you draw up a player, scouts have a feel for what they want to see,” Sanders told me. “Prototypical standards. Dustin went against the grain in some of those areas, starting with his size.” When we can’t fit a square peg into a round hole, we’ll usually blame the peg—when
Nate Silver (The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't)
Plans are fucking useless because life will always jack that shit up. I speak from experience. Stop trying to force guys to fit your plans. Men are square pegs, and while they're all about the round hole, they're never going to stop being square. Either embrace the square or find a new one.
Kate Canterbary (Hard Pressed (Talbott's Cove, #2))
We don't try to force things to go the way we think they should. We give up trying to fit square pegs into round holes. Instead, we yield ourselves, trusting that, even if we do not like what we hear, we are safe to surrender to the larger context of our lives, trusting ultimately that all is well. Herein lies inner peace.
Katherine Woodward Thomas (Calling in "The One": 7 Weeks to Attract the Love of Your Life)
A year is plenty of time to fit in, right? Like a square peg is going to fit into a round hole if you just give it time? You could say that when I arrived here in the middle of my seventh-grade year I settled into a well-defined niche that was purely my own and remains so in eighth grade. The niche of a minuscule, mouthy Mohawk misfit. And nothing is going to change that.
Joseph Bruchac (Bearwalker)
The laces, untied, the socks won't match. I won't know what to wear and when to wear it and I am rubbish at the small talk required to fit into places I've never bothered to fit into. There are square pegs that spend their lives trying to squeeze into round holes, but I wasn't even given four straight sides, I am shapes when none are required, I am a million wrongs stuffed into something I never asked if it was right. I am this, and I've never been that, I've no plans to remedy the broken bits.
Tyler Knott Gregson (Wildly into the Dark: Typewriter Poems and the Rattlings of a Curious Mind)
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. —Steve Jobs, Apple’s “Think Different” ad, 1997
Walter Isaacson (The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race)
They want to find work they’re passionate about. Offering benefits and incentives are mere compromises. Educating people is important but not enough—far too many of our most educated people are operating at quarter-speed, unsure of their place in the world, contributing too little to the productive engine of modern civilization, still feeling like observers, like they haven’t come close to living up to their potential. Our guidance needs to be better. We need to encourage people to find their sweet spot. Productivity explodes when people love what they do. We’re sitting on a huge potential boom in productivity, which we could tap into if we got all the square pegs in the square holes and round pegs in round holes. It’s not something we can measure with statistics, but it’s a huge economic issue. It’s a great natural resource that we’re ignoring.
Po Bronson (What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question)
Think Different was a slogan used by Apple in 1997.6 Part of the campaign included a commercial known as The Crazy Ones. The narration goes like this:   Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.   It’s easy to dismiss this campaign as grandiose, hyperbolic, and idealistic. But it’s not. Big changes are usually the result of a bunch of little changes strung together. That’s how big changes happen. Thinking differently doesn’t guarantee we’ll change the world, but it gives us a better chance. And any change we bring about could potentially sow the seeds of a bigger change in the future. Don’t trivialize your impact. Most of us don’t think beyond what we know, or what’s expected of us. It’s hard to think different. But if we train ourselves to do it, it starts to come naturally.
Jesse Tevelow (Hustle: The Life Changing Effects of Constant Motion)
In other words, when you feel love, that means that the way you are seeing the object of your attention matches the way the Inner You sees it. When you feel hate, you are seeing it without that Inner Connection. You intuitively knew all of this, especially when you were younger, but gradually most of you were worn down by the insistence of those older and self-described “wiser” others who surrounded you as they worked hard to convince you that you could not trust your own impulses. And so, most of you physical Beings do not trust yourselves, which is amazing to us, for that which comes forth from within you is all that you may trust. But instead, you are spending most of your physical lifetimes seeking a set of rules or a group of people (a religious or political group, if you will) who will tell you what is right and wrong. And then you spend the rest of your physical experience trying to hammer your “square peg” into someone else’s “round hole,” trying to make those old rules—usually those that were written thousands of years before your time—fit into this new life experience. And, as a result, what we see, for the most part, is your frustration, and at best, your confusion. And, we also have noticed that every year there are many of you who are dying, as you are arguing about whose set of rules is most appropriate. We say to you: That overall, all-inclusive, never-changing set of rules does not exist—for you are ever-changing, growth-seeking Beings.
Esther Hicks (The Law of Attraction: The Basics of the Teachings of Abraham)
We are supposed to be different. Do not try to put round pegs in square holes. When people look at us, believe in yourself.
Manoj Arora (From the Rat Race to Financial Freedom)
Don’t try to pound them into your framework like square pegs into round holes.
Ethan M. Rasiel (The McKinsey Way)
India is not a country that lends itself well to organisation and punctuality, so to try to incorporate any system to the contrary is like trying to force a square peg into a round hole and will only result in frustration or an arterial embolism.
Monisha Rajesh (Around India in 80 Trains)
A misfit is like the round peg that cannot fit into the square hole or the running river that just can’t stay still.
Pearl Zhu (Thinkingaire: 100 Game Changing Digital Mindsets to Compete for the Future)
They say "the taste of the pudding is in the eating," but that doesn't apply to "a square peg in a round hole". If the peg is driven by hunger to give and desire to fill, and the hole on the other hand is moved by thirst to receive and purpose to fulfil, then a deep knowledge of the reason for existence, a mutual understanding of roles, and the wisdom to effectively carry out those roles are very key, if we must have a round peg in a round hole, or a square peg in a square hole. But then again, who cares about "shape" in desperation?!
Olaotan Fawehinmi (The Soldier Within)
The judges believed Uber and Lyft to be more powerful than they were willing to admit, but they also conceded that the companies did not have the same power over employees as an old-economy employer like Walmart. “The jury in this case will be handed a square peg and asked to choose between two round holes,” Judge Chhabria wrote. Judge Chen, meanwhile, wondered whether Uber, despite a claim of impotence at the center of the network, exerted a kind of invisible power over drivers that might give them a case. In order to define this new power, he decided to turn where few judges do: the late French philosopher Michel Foucault. In a remarkable passage, Judge Chen compared Uber’s power to that of the guards at the center of the Panopticon, which Foucault famously analyzed in Discipline and Punish. The Panopticon was a design for a circular prison building dreamed up in the eighteenth century by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham. The idea was to empower a solitary guard in the center of the building to watch over a large number of inmates, not because he was actually able to see them all at once, but because the design kept any prisoner from knowing who was being observed at any given moment. Foucault analyzed the nature and working of power in the Panopticon, and the judge found it analogous to Uber’s. He quoted a line about the “state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.” The judge was suggesting that the various ways in which Uber monitored, tracked, controlled, and gave feedback on the service of its drivers amounted to the “functioning of power,” even if the familiar trappings of power—ownership of assets, control over an employee’s time—were missing. The drivers weren’t like factory workers employed and regimented by a plant, yet they weren’t independent contractors who could do whatever they pleased. They could be fired for small infractions. That is power. It can be disturbing that the most influential emerging power center of our age is in the habit of denying its power, and therefore of promoting a vision of change that changes nothing meaningful while enriching itself. Its posture is not entirely cynical, though. The technology world has long maintained that the tools it creates are inherently leveling and will serve to collapse power divides rather than widen them.
Anand Giridharadas (Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World)
I was still very much embroiled in the racist politics of the National Front, living a double-life in which I wrote hate-filled propaganda during the day and read the love-filled pages of Chesterton and Lewis at night. I was not aware of any contradiction, at least at first, and sought to bring the two warring viewpoints together by a process of Orwellian doublethink, which is defined in Nineteen Eighty-four as “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”1 Throughout the early to mid-eighties I became very adept at doublethink, endeavoring to squeeze the square peg of my Christian reading into the round hole of my racist ideology. As my knowledge of Christianity grew larger and my commitment to racial nationalism diminished in consequence, the strain of squeezing an ever larger peg into an ever-shrinking hole would eventually become impossible. My days of doublethink were numbered.
Joseph Pearce (Race With the Devil: My Journey from Racial Hatred to Rational Love)
The importance of self-discovery and cocreation doesn’t stop with purpose. They are just as essential for making sense of challenges and for developing solutions that are likely to be adopted, adaptable, and successful. What is standard in most organizations is importing best practices or imposing practices from above. The assumption that a best practice will work everywhere is just too convenient to resist. So is the assumption that local context and people, though important, will not matter enough to make the difference. Plus, best practices fit nicely with the deep-seated notion that reinventing the wheel is a waste of time and money. Unfortunately, importing or imposing best practices usually involves trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Context, culture, and people do matter more than we like to admit, and resistance inevitably emerges when we discount them.
Henri Lipmanowicz (The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures: Simple Rules to Unleash A Culture of Innovation)
We are the square pegs that do not neatly fit into the round holes of life without taking a battering.
Kevin Berry (Stim)
People could force themselves to change, basically stuffing a square peg into a round hole, but the core person usually remained the same.
Anne Frasier (Tell Me (Inland Empire, #2))
The handful of popcorn must be smaller than your mouth Don’t take large fistfuls of popcorn and push and shove them into your mouth like a toddler forcing a square peg into a round hole. If popcorn is spilling back into the feed-bucket or onto your lap and the floor around you, then you’re taking too much. I realise it’s dark and no one can see, but that’s no reason to suddenly start eating like a bulimic possum. Slow down, take smaller ‘handfuls’ and chew. With your mouth closed, obviously.
Kitty Flanagan (488 Rules for Life)
I wish someone had told me that there wasn’t something wrong with me and that I shouldn’t be trying to make it right; that I should stop trying to pound a square peg into a round hole. I wish someone had told me that I wasn’t like everyone else not because I was defective, but because I was designed for other things. Being different might seem like a curse, but the important part is that it’s also a blessing. I wish someone had told me to stop trying to fix the curse part and start figuring out the blessing part.
Jed McKenna (Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing (The Enlightenment Trilogy Book 1))
When humans see a creature in broad daylight, it makes them uneasy. We’re too much for them—too tall, too strong, too confident, too creative, too powerful, too different. They try very hard to push our square pegs into their round holes all day long. At night it’s a bit easier to dismiss us as merely odd.
Deborah Harkness (A Discovery of Witches (All Souls, #1))
We Believe WE BELIEVE that childhood is a time to foster wonder, creativity, and discovery through play and exploration. WE BELIEVE that children learn because they want to, not because they’re forced to. And WE BELIEVE in letting them learn at their own pace. WE BELIEVE in giving children an abundance of opportunities, time, and access to beauty—like art, music, literature, nature, and their own imaginations. WE BELIEVE this path isn’t just for childhood but for a lifetime of pursuing their own interests, responding to life and not bells, and building a life based on purpose, not perfection. We are the misfits, the renegades, the square pegs in round holes. But we are not alone. We have each other. And we are in this TOGETHER.
Ainsley Arment (The Call of the Wild and Free: Reclaiming Wonder in Your Child's Education)
A rant is the product of someone attempting to defend the belief that a round peg is a square hole and a square hole is a round peg in order to defend the opinion that each fit the other and can be used interchangeably. But this requires that we explain that all of the damaged holes and broken pegs are neither.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” ― Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Love, family, and organizational leadership is not a competition, it’s a collaboration. We have to choose our partners and teammates wisely to reach common goals and objectives. There can be no square pegs in round holes. We must know and recognize what fits to avoid fits and complications. There is zero time for unshared vision and undermining.
Erik Seversen (Peak Performance: Mindset Tools for Leaders (Peak Performance Series))
Inspiration is when you find the right theme, one which you really like; that makes the work much easier. Intuition, which is also fundamental to writing fiction, is a special quality which helps you to decipher what is real without needing scientific knowledge, or any other special kind of learning. The laws of gravity can be figured out much more easily with intuition than anything else. It’s a way of having experience without having to struggle through it. For a novelist, intuition is essential. Basically it’s contrary to intellectualism, which is probably the thing that I detest most in the world—in the sense that the real world is turned into a kind of immovable theory. Intuition has the advantage that either it is, or it isn’t. You don’t struggle to try to put a round peg into a square hole.
Gabriel García Márquez
I'm the crazy one. The misfit, the rebel, the troublemaker, and the round peg in the square hole. "Because I see things differently.
James Hilton
In English, the word wisdom is always positive. Hence you have to do a lot of spinning and twisting to make this square peg fit a round hole. However, in the Semitic mind, wisdom can have either a positive or negative connotation. Sometimes the word wisdom which in Aramaic is khekmtha, can idiomatically mean stupidity, just the opposite of what we think of when we hear the word wisdom. Like in English, some still say something like “That movie was bad,” but he really means it was great. In this passage, Jesus is using a similar idiom in the Aramaic and says: “Since your arguments are so inconsistent, it is a clear indication of your stupidity.” Or, to put his words in less formal English, Jesus would have said, “You guys are so off the wall. Like that has got to be the most stupid argument I have ever heard yet.
Chaim Bentorah (Aramaic Word Study II: Discover God's Heart In The Language Of The New Testament)
Of course we're going to work, even if I'm a round peg and he's a square hole - I don't care, I'll shave down the edges of myself to keep him.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
These are the square pegs that would not fit into round holes. They went backward when everyone went forward, and they went forward when everyone stood still. They said nay when others said aye, and they saw black when others saw white. Despite suffering, economic and spiritual, they refused to be garmented to the strait jacket of conformity. This, and no other, is their achievement - and it is enough. For when our society no longer has a single square peg, when it no longer has a recalcitrant individual out of step, when it no longer has a voice that will rise to dissent and disagree and persists in an unorthodoxy, then, and only then, will man have lost his battle and his last chance.
Irving Wallace (The Square Pegs: Some Americans Who Dared to Be Different)
Having the freedom to be a round peg in a square hole.
Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)
figure out why those things happened, we are susceptible to a variety of cognitive traps, like assuming causation when there is only a correlation, or cherry-picking data to confirm the narrative we prefer. We will pound a lot of square pegs into round holes to maintain the illusion of a tight relationship between our outcomes and our decisions.
Annie Duke (Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts)
I know this is fun for you. You get to travel around, act superior than everyone else. Plus you get to go home, get married, get some boring job, have tons of kids, and when you die you get your own planet. It all sounds pretty awesome. But, there are other kinds of people. People like Charlie, for whom this amazing plan doesn’t fit. You can’t fit a round peg in a square hole, and you certainly can’t fit a morbidly obese gay peg in a Mormon hole. That came out wrong.
Samuel D. Hunter (The Whale)
There are not so many round pegs in square holes one might think. Most people, in spite of what they tell you choose the occupation that they secretly desire. You will hear a man say who works in an office, 'I should like to explore, to rough it in far countries.' But you will find that he likes reading the fiction that deals with that subject, but that he himself prefers the safety and moderate comfort of an office stool.
Agatha Christie
Payment processing: As seen, you now can fit a Square peg through a round hole and be a merchant. Education
Scott Stratten (UnSelling: The New Customer Experience)
When we work backward from results to figure out why those things happened, we are susceptible to a variety of cognitive traps, like assuming causation when there is only a correlation, or cherry-picking data to confirm the narrative we prefer. We will pound a lot of square pegs into round holes to maintain the illusion of a tight relationship between our outcomes and our decisions.
Annie Duke (Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts)
Even though there was not a shadow of doubt that my boy was an Aspie, we never pushed to get a formal diagnosis. He already had an IEP in place, so I figured, why bother? As long as he was getting the help, the modifications and the tools he needed to succeed, I didn’t care about the diagnosis. Then Jay entered 3rd grade, and well, that way of thinking changed. That year the other children started to notice Jay’s quirky behaviors and uncontrollable emotional outbursts. But even more importantly, Jay was starting to notice. He was not sleeping at night, his anxiety level was at an all-time high and his self-confidence was dangerously low. One day, in the middle of a meltdown, my boy blurted out, “I feel like I am a square peg trying to fit into a round hole, and no matter how hard I try to make myself fit, I can’t do it. Why am I like this, Mommy?” My heart broke for my son. Not believing was no longer an option. We took him to be officially diagnosed.
Sharon Fuentes (The Don't Freak Out Guide To Parenting Kids With Asperger's)
She wonders whether she’ll ever be able to fit her square-peg self into this round-holed world instead of constantly having to fake it.
Andrew E. Kaufman (What She Doesn't Know)
For the first time since I joined the infantry, I didn't feel like a square peg trying to be squeezed into a round hole. WO Godin and this young instructor had adapted that hole to accommodate my corners. It was meant to be a joke, but what they had just done was to recognize my differences, and instead of trying to penalize the entire team in order to even out the playing field or worse yet, to force me to be what I could not be, they had embraced those differences.
Sandra Perron (Out Standing in the Field)
. . . there is a societal benefit to tolerating, perhaps even nurturing . . . the crazy ones—the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes.
Phil Lapsley