Taylor Davidson
About
Blog
Projects
Financial Models
“A Work Apart”

Meeting, Richmond, Virginia
Meeting | Richmond, Virginia, USA | Sep 2008

A Work Apart, Richmond, Virginia
A Work Apart | Richmond, Virginia, USA | Sep 2008

Branching out from “A Life Apart” to “A Work Apart”…

Ralph Waldo Emerson, An Essay on Self-Reliance:

…Misunderstood! It is a right fool’s word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

Posted October 5th, 2008 in Photography. Tags: , , , , , .
Hello, I'm Taylor Davidson.
I'm an early-stage VC and a photographer. If you liked this post, please subscribe to this blog. For more like this, check out the archives, and follow me on Twitter @tdavidson.
  • ericajoh

    “…To be great is to be misunderstood.” Interesting. I usually feel the least great when I'm being misunderstood.

  • http://www.taylordavidson.com/writing Taylor Davidson

    Ah: but what's the source of how you feel? Greatness is usually misunderstood by others at first. Do you feel “least great” because others reject what you create, or because you are unsatisfied with your own work?

  • ericajoh

    Both. Because others don't always seem to understand what I want to say with a particular work, they don't get the meaning of it. Then I feel I could have done it different in some way, made it clearer and less complicated perhaps.

  • http://www.taylordavidson.com/writing Taylor Davidson

    Communication goes both ways; the burden of being understood is borne by the sender and the receiver.

    The key to the quote, though, is that for it to be great it has to be understood as great by someone, eventually; often the timing between sending and receiving is grossly misaligned.

MORE: Financial Models for Entrepreneurs
Copyright 1976-2012 Taylor Davidson