Conformity Quotes - Page 2

A fair and just society offers equality of opportunity to all. But it cannot promise, and should not try to enforce, sameness.

Today, one must either be isolated and cut off, or a carefully guarded, affluent drop-out, to allow one's children to play in an environment where they listen to people rather than to stars, speakers, or instructors. All over the world, one can see the rapid encroachment of the disciplined acquiescence that characterizes the audience, the client, the customer.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

People like us are dead to society unless we’re pretentious, tell people what they want to hear, take off our clothes, or pretend to be like them.

It’s true, though, others won’t understand me. I know that. I’m still an alien in the American Christian subculture.Each evening I retreat from it, and I go straight to the Gospels.It's not out of duty that I read about Jesus; it's a respite.

A prison becomes a home when you have the key.

There is a time in a boy’s life when the sweetness is pounded out of him; and tenderness, and the ability to show what he feels, is gone.

We are not supposed to all be the same, feel the same, think the same, and believe the same. The key to continued expansion of our Universe lies in diversity, not in conformity and coercion. Conventionality is the death of creation.

A closed conforming society is a sick society waiting to die from stagnation and inner illness. Only openness is the treatment.

The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it's a job.Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.I call the process of doing your art 'the work.' It's possible to have a job and do the work, too. In fact, that's how you become a linchpin.The job is not the work.

One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be, rather than being yourself.

If what you create seems to turn out much stranger than who you are as a person, it's probably because your heart is talking.

Case by case, we find that conformity is the easy way, and the path to privilege and prestige; dissidence carries personal costs that may be severe, even in a society that lacks such means of control as deathsquads, psychiatric prisons, or extermination camps. The very structure of the media is designed to induce conformity to established doctrine. In a three-minute stretch between commercials, or in seven hundred words, it is impossible to present unfamiliar thoughts or surprising conclusions with the argument and evidence required to afford them some credibility. Regurgitation of welcome pieties faces no such problem.

There is, however, hope for any person who wants to remain an individual. He can assert himself and refuse to conform. He'll be on his own, that's true, but while he will not have the security enjoyed by those who do conform, there will be no limits to what he may achieve.

Conformity is a problem for many small groups. Members put a higher priority on cohesion than on coming up with a well-reasoned choice. They pressure dissenters, shield themselves from negative feedback, keep silent when they disagree ...

One of our most deep-seated fears is that we might be called an “outsider.” This fear has led us down the road to conformity, has put the imprint of “the organization man” on our souls, and has robbed us of originality of thought, individuality of personality, and constructive action.

Since the war, we're the only intelligent species left in the universe, therefore we think everything in this universe has to conform to our paradigm of what makes sense. Do you have any idea how arrogant that view is and on how little of this universe we base it?

It's time for a new National Anthem. America is divided into two definite divisions. The easy thing to cop out with is sayin' black and white. You can see a black person. But now to get down to the nitty-gritty, it's getting' to be old and young - not the age, but the way of thinking. Old and new, actually... because there's so many even older people that took half their lives to reach a certain point that little kids understand now.

They want you to use a black umbrella; use yellow, use red, use green and always refuse the thing they want you to use! Refusal is often more honourable than conformity!

Snark often functions as an enforcer of mediocrity and conformity. In its cozy knowingness, snark flatters you by assuming that you get the contemptuous joke. You've been admitted, or readmitted, to a club, though it may be the club of the second-rate.

The societies kids naturally form are tribal. Gangs, clubs, packs. But we're herded into schools and terrified into behaving. Taught how we're supposed to pretend to be, taught to parrot all kinds of nonsense at the flick of a switch, taught to keep our heads down and our elbows in and shut off our minds and shut off our sex. We learn we can't even piss when we have to. That's how we learn to be plastic and dumb.

Peer pressure accounts for much of the promiscuous sex in high schools and colleges. “Conform or get lost.” Since no one enjoys losing friends or being cast out of his own circle, peer pressure—especially during the years of adolescence—is an almost irresistible force.

The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. . . . The force of character is cumulative.

You'd corner me in your conformity but even in dormancy i'm sleeping with enormity, stretching the belly of the earth & everything i was born to be.

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.

You need to make a decision - are you are an imitator or an innovator?

Opinions of the masses kill the 'extra' in an 'extraordinary' idea.

Most people want so desperately to be an individual yet are so easily shaped by the media.

If we had to earn our age by thinking for ourselves at least once a year, only a handful of people would reach adulthood.

Societal peer pressure to conform runs strong, but as more of us continue to think and act for ourselves, rather than be under the influence of group-think, we begin to make more effective choices.

Somebody is born. Somebody goes to school. Somebody learns to conform. Somebody types a CV. Somebody gets a job. Somebody follows orders. Somebody gets a golden watch. And then, eventually, Somebody dies. And, a Nobody is buried.

when you obey the rules, the rules obey you

The beauty of life does not reside in certainty or conformity. It resides in the infinite possibilities of uncertainty.

We are the anarchists your parents warned you about.

If unconventional ideas = sperm, then public opinion = abortion.

Emily Dickinson sublimely unnames even the blanks.

People are always quick to call evil what they do not know. The unknown sprouts fear. It spreads like an infection, burrowing into every facet of their lives. They need a scapegoat, someone to blame. Fingers are pointed, accusations are made, and a target lands on somebody’s back. They grow angry. They turn violent.To history, human nature must be a stubborn and tiring student. No matter how many times history tries to show it the error of its ways, it never learns from its mistakes.

for meobedience to another is the decayof self

The greatest obstacle in understanding the universe is the conformity and fear of truth.

The United States is democratic because its people live in conformity. It is the perfect country for mice.

National Review's premise was that conformity was especially egregious among the intellectuals, that herd of independent minds.

It is often difficult to educate a child about the beauty of an open mind when he is a prisoner of societal conformity.

Be Yourself. An original is worth more than a copy

In every southerner, beneath the veneer of clichés lies a much deeper motherlode of cliché. But even cliché is overlaid with enormous power when a child is involved.

Freedom began on the day the first sheep wandered away from the herd.

By acquiescing in an act that causes such suffering to a living creature, who among us is not diminished?

The forces of freedom and choice will always triumph against the forces of conformity and control.

No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character.

Under the absolute sway of an individual despot the body was attacked in order to subdue the soul, and the soul escaped the blows which were directed against it and rose superior to the attempt; but such is not the course adopted by tyranny in democratic republics; there the body is left free, and the soul is enslaved.

I became one of those anonymous Americans who tries to keep his mind sharp and inquisitive while performing all the humiliating rituals of the middle class

And it never even occurs to them their certainty that they are different is what makes them the same.

make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.

(He) committed the cardinal sin in a college atmosphere not only of being different but of being different in a way that left a lot of people with the impression that he thought he was better than they were.

Shakespeare's work had a liberating influence.

It was a bland, tranquilized, life-adjusted, group-integrated sort of face -- the face turned out in thousands of copies every year by the educational production lines on Terra.

Am I a prisoner of my thoughts?Am I a prisoner of my societal conformity?Who am I?How conscious am I?Am I conscious or obnoxious?

The uncertainties in life are so uncertain for us to determine the kind of 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

Liar! I know that you humans build your life in lies. It starts with your mortal lords and their fabricated gods. They use fictitious stories to impregnate the minds of people, and like herds of sheep they do as their told. With manipulation alone is enough to secure their reign. After all, is it not in your nature to be wanted and purposeful? It is such an easy game to play. I have observed this falsehood accepted by fathers and mothers over and over again. The idiocy becomes one with their children, and they become the infrastructure that not only sedates but corrodes the soul with instructed conformity. In the end, lies are all that you are.

He who fails to achieve a dream set by himself is more honorable than he who succeeds in achieving a dream set by his society.