> If something was not written in a book I could not invent it unless it was a rather useless variation of a known theory. __More annoyingly, I found it very ha

> If something was not written in a book I could not invent it unless it was a rather useless variation of a known theory. __More annoyingly, I found it very hard to challenge the status-quo__, to question what I had learned. (__emphasis__ mine) As if "challenging the status-quo" was the goal in the first place. You ain't gonna get any Einstein by asking people to think inside the "outside the box" box. "Status quo" isn't the enemy, and defying it isn't the path to genius; if you're measuring your own intellectual capacity by proxy of how much you question, you ain't gonna get anywhere useful. After all, questioning everything is easy, and doesn't require any particular skill. The hard thing is to be right, despite both the status-quo and the "question the status-quo" memes. (It also helps being in the right time and place, to have access to the results of previous work that is required to make that next increment - that's another, oft forgotten factor.)