Conformity Quotes

Insecurity of the spirit demands completeness elsewhere.

The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

I've known one thing for a long time: there's a role in the big machine even for someone who makes fun of it.

Blindly believing something often comes from societal conformity which is a sign of a lack of deep knowledge and imaginative consciousness.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

FRUITS AND NUTSKeep jumping around them like monkeys.The clones,Commercialized zombies,And the TV junkies.Keep throwing berries,Twigs,And nuts at them.Until they wake upTo see what's up And figure out whyWe're laughing at 'em.

To find beauty, look above the boundaries of conformity.

So distracting, so complete is she that she is gone before many realize that she had no escort, she was alone, a parade of one.

Life is for those that deserve it. Those kings amongst men who can climb out of barrels and will dare to break through glass walls and to transcend all of this whatever it is, these eyes to the ground, this pretence, acting only as is expected and never as is intended. We have been told what is acceptable in what situation and so we take heed. This is not living. In the real world, in nature, there is no need to pretend. There is no place for it.

College: two hundred people reading the same book. An obvious mistake. Two hundred people can read two hundred books.

At the point where he, today's Ivan Ilyich, began to emerge, all the pleasures that had seemed so real melted away now before his eyes and turned into something trivial and often disgusting.And the further he was from childhood, the nearer he got to the present day, the more trivial and dubious his pleasures appeared. It started with law school. That had retained a little something that was really good: there was fun, there was friendship, there was hope. But in the last years the good times had become more exceptional. Then, at the beginning of his service with the governor, some good times came again: memories of making love to a woman. Then it became all confused, and the good times were not so many. After that there were fewer still; the further he went the fewer there were.Marriage. . .an accident and such a disappointment, and his wife's bad breath, and all that sensuality and hypocrisy! And the deadlines of his working life, and those money worries, going on for a year, two years, ten, twenty - always the same old story. And the longer it went on the deadlier it became.'It's as if I had been going downhill when I thought I was going uphill. That's how it was. In society's opinion I was heading uphill, but in equal measure life was slipping away from me...And now it's all over. Nothing left but to die!

There is this common notion that people are shallow and ignorant until they go out and see the world. I, on the other hand, went out and in comparison realized I was in pretty good standing.

The uncertainties in life are so uncertain for us to determine the kind woe we shall be entangled in in the next future. When you stay dormant, your life is at risk; when you dare to take a step, you take a step to take a risk. We have a choice. Yes! a choice to choose to dare to get to our real reasons on earth or to choose to live in mediocrity and conformity, but, we ought to note that, it is riskier to risk nothing when the life we live is always at risk.

It is easy to conform, but it takes great courage to stand up for peace.

You laugh at me because I'm different, I laugh at you because you're all the same.

Reviewing bad books is bad for the character – WH Auden

I just know Maycomb. I'm not in the least sensitive about it, but good Lord, I'm certainly aware of it.

The thing I've never understood about dancing till now is that it only looks stupid when you're on the outside, watching other people do it. When you're part of the crowd, moving along with everyone else, I can't imagine anything else being quite as much fun.

A whole nation cannot rise above itself.

This is the history of governments, - one man does something which is to bind another. A man who cannot be acquainted with me, taxes me; looking from afar at me, ordains that a part of my labour shall go to this or that whimsical end, not as I, but as he happens to fancy. Behold the consequence. Of all debts, men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their money's worth, except for these. Hence, the less government we have, the better, - the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man, of whom the existing government, is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation. That which all things tend to educe, which freedom, cultivation, intercourse, revolutions, go to form and deliver, is character; that is the end of nature, to reach unto this coronation of her king. To educate the wise man, the State exists; and with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. The appearance of character makes the State unnecessary. The wise man is the State. He needs no army, fort, or navy, - he loves men too well; no bribe, or feast, or palace, to draw friends to him; no vantage ground, no favourable circumstance. He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is a prophet; no statute book, for he has the lawgiver; no money, for he is value; no road, for he is at home where he is; no experience, for the life of the creator shoots through him, and looks from his eyes. He has no personal friends, for he who has the spell to draw the prayer and piety of all men unto him, needs not husband and educate a few, to share with him a select and poetic life. His relation to men is angelic; his memory is myrrh to them; his presence, frankincense and flowers.

But God has not called us to be like those around us. He has called us to be like Himself. Holiness is nothing less than conformity to the character of God.

I spent most of my life trying to specialize myself. I went to theater school, film school, music school, mime school ... Finally, I was able to gather enough knowledge to build the confidence to create my own work, that goes utterly against the sense of specialization.

How can you reform when you are always busy conforming?

Conformity keeps us closed minded.

To find beauty, rise above conformity and find opportunities.

Rebel children, I urge you, fight the turgid slick of conformity with which they seek to smother your glory.

Prime numbers are divisible only by 1 and by themselves. They hold their place in the infinite series of natural numbers, squashed, like all numbers, between two others, but one step further than the rest. They are suspicious, solitary numbers, which is why Mattia thought they were wonderful. Sometimes he thought that they had ended up in that sequence by mistake, that they'd been trapped, like pearls strung on a necklace. Other times he suspected that they too would have preferred to be like all others, just ordinary numbers, but for some reason they couldn't do it. This second thought struck him mostly at night, in the chaotic interweaving of images that comes before sleep, when the mind is too weak to tell itself lies.

Alas, everything that men say to one another is alike; the ideas they exchange are almost always the same, in their conversation. But inside all those isolated machines, what hidden recesses, what secret compartments! It is an entire world that each one carries within him, an unknown world that is born and dies in silence! What solitudes all these human bodies are!

The apostle Paul urges Christians everywhere in all ages to be nonconformists as far as the world system is concerned. We are not to conform. A true Christian, living an obedient life, is a constant rebuke to those who accept themoral standards of this world.

To simply survive appears to be the choice of the plodding hoards that wander all around me. Therefore, I’ve adamantly committed to never hoard hoards.

Courage is being yourself in a world that almost seems to endorse conformity.

But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society. It is true, I might have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run "amok" against society; but I preferred that society should run "amok" against me, it being the desperate party.

When we heed God's Word, we are rejecting how the world tries to disciple us.

We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything, than when we are at play.

You are only free when you can grow wings of wisdom to fly away from the cage of societal conformity.

Don’t conform. Don’t live in a small dirty pond when the ocean of life is lovingly inviting you.

God never uses one approach to the get his job done in the world. Each soul has its own way of being reached. He has put inside of each of us an unique song, that only another heart can hear clearly. To wish you were someone else robs another human being of the special blessings, talents and gifts God meant for you to share.

All the heroes of tomorrow are the heretics of today.

Think of the end when you begin! Though the end may not be all that certain, you are sure of getting something, mostly and surprisingly, above the target in the end! Bind yourself to Persistence and tenacity, courage and vigor, Wisdom and faith, and dare unrelentingly! Sometimes it is never okay to feel okay at all. Some shall continue to feel okay until they meet what would tell them what they could have done whilst feeling okay! So it was in the days of the Fig tree. It thought portraying its flourishing leaves would have pleased Jesus Christ but Jesus needed a fruit! We are all having flourishing leaves (life,) but think of the fruits we must bear (living) when it is time to bear them, in season and out of season! May enough be enough and when you feel you have had enough, may you be pushed by enough to go beyond enough and dare to live a distinctive footprint! It all begins with a step and ends with a step! Start your day with vigor and an utmost tenacity and end your day with something! Be poised to do something distinctive each day for that is all life is about! Life is an adventurous journey and you cannot forever skip mistakes but if you make a mistake, learn from the mistake, do something with the mistake and avoid that mistake happening again and you least did made a mistake! You only took a different root than the usual to your final destination. The meaning we have given to words is what makes words have meaning! Breathe whilst you have breath and do something with the air you breathe whilst you have breath!

It is often asked, “How could the early disciples turn the world upside downwhen millions of Christians can’t even keep it right side up today?” The answer is they didn’t conform their faith to match the world. They had the truth, and they refused to water it down. They had a faith that would not compromise.

...all these things were part of the business of dreams. He had learned not to laugh at the advertisements offering to teach writing, cartooning, engineering, to add inches to the biceps and to develop the bust

You are a prisoner of conformity when you care about what other people think.

Normal people are just freaks who are afraid to be themselves in public.

If you want to conform, then how can you change?

What I’m starting to realize is that when you conform, people are not accepting you for who you are. They’re accepting you for who they think you are.

Joining a sub-culture, any sub-culture, for whatever reason, is as I see it never a legitimate self-expression. It is always a result of sheep mentality; a wish to belong somewhere.

To be what you always wanted to be, step away from conformity.

It is a tragedy that many of God’s people have conformed themselves to the world and its thinking, rather than being transformed by the renewing of their minds.

The marriage of reason and nightmare that dominated the 20th century has given birth to an ever more ambiguous world. Across the communications landscape move the spectres of sinister technologies and the dreams that money can buy. Thermo-nuclear weapons systems and soft-drink commercials coexist in an overlit realm ruled by advertising and pseudo-events, science and pornography. Over our lives preside the great twin leitmotifs of the 20th century – sex and paranoia…In a sense, pornography is the most political form of fiction, dealing with how we use and exploit each other, in the most urgent and ruthless way.

The pagan world is still trying to put its stamp of conformity on every follower of Jesus Christ. Every possible pressure is being brought to bear upon Christiansto make them conform to the standards of the present world . . .be a committed follower of Jesus Christ.

Think about the word mould for a moment. A mould is a device into which one crams and smashes something until it becomes the shape that they desire. Don't spend your life letting other people destroy you while they try and force you into their moulds.

Nowadays, ads don't just sell a product. They sell an attitude! Look at this one! Here's a cool guy saying nobody tells him what to do. He does whatever he wants and he buys this product as a reflection of that independence. So basically, this maverick is urging everyone to express his individuality through conformity in brand-name selection?

Companies preach creativity, hire for conformity and call consultants when they fail who tell them to be more creative.

A head can be beaten small enough until it fits the hat.

Plants are more courageous than almost all human beings: an orange tree would rather die than produce lemons, whereas instead of dying the average person would rather be someone they are not.

When men live huddled together without true communication, there seems to be a greater sharing, and a more genuine communion. But this is not communion, only immersion in the general meaninglessness of countless slogans and clichés repeated over and over again so that in the end one listens without hearing and responds without thinking. The constant din of empty words and machine noises, the endless booming of loudspeakers end by making true communication and true communion almost impossible...

A true education opens the mind and lets us see the world with wonder and joy. It teaches us to accept change with love, and it teaches us to be harmonious with humanity and nature. If any education teaches us to close our minds, to accept dogma, and to violently inhibit questioning then that is not an education. That is a prison for the mind.

However, because they have no actual interests of their own (or if they do, they squelch them in order to fit in) and merely pursue those that they think will look best on their college apps, they're zombies.

The greater part of the world has, properly speaking, no history, because the despotism of Custom is complete. This is the case over the whole East. Custom is there, in all things, the final appeal; justice and right mean conformity to custom; the argument of custom no one, unless some tyrant intoxicated with power, thinks of resisting. And we see the result. Those nations must once have had originality; they did not start out of the ground populous, lettered, and versed in many of the arts of life; they made themselves all this, and were then the greatest and most powerful nations in the world. What are they now? The subjects or dependants of tribes whose forefathers wandered in the forests when theirs had magnificent palaces and gorgeous temples, but over whom custom exercised only a divided rule with liberty and progress.