> Many would rather be accepted than exceptional. At some point in your life, you may have to make that choice.
I think that there are two problems with this. (EDIT: 'Problems' is a bad word. I don't mean two things that make it wrong, but rather two things that require a careful reading to appreciate fully. I should have said 'subtleties'.)
First, and most importantly, I think that people think that being exceptional is a choice. Thus, someone says "ah, I shall be exceptional!", and sits back and waits to become so. Being exceptional is not a choice; becoming exceptional is, though it is a slow process, subject to setbacks, and not guaranteed of even eventual success (unless—as is perhaps uniquely appropriate here—one is willing to move the goalposts when necessary, and find success where one is).
Second, I take your explicit point to be the decision between being accepted and being exceptional, but I'll respond as if it were between being conformist and being exceptional (which I took to be the subtext). After the problem is surmounted of deciding just to be exceptional, and realising that one must become so, I think that sometimes people confuse blind non-conformity with reasoned non-conformity. That is, a decision not to conform just in order not to be part of the crowd is just as silly as a decision to conform to be part of the crowd. Rather, make your decisions as you will, regardless of the pressure of the crowds, with the idea that you will sometimes agree with and (probably) more often disagree with them, and become exceptional in that way.