quotations about conformity
Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity.
MAYA ANGELOU
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Everything in life that deviates from the straight and, so to speak, normal line, makes people first curious and then indignant.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
I'm not a punk, how can I be?
Show me the way to conformity
Try to be different but it's always the same
End up playin' someone else's game
DESCENDENTS
"I'm Not a Punk", Milo Goes to College
Death is just the final form of conformity
if that's what becoming it means
well then I'd rather be the
Lone ranger
MARK SALLING
"Lone Ranger"
May God prevent us from becoming "right-thinking men"--that is to say, men who agree perfectly with their own police.
THOMAS MERTON
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
How deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden
Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.
ERIC HOFFER
Reflections on the Human Condition
You laugh at me because I am different; I laugh because you are all the same.
DANIEL KNODE
attributed, The Greatest Quotations of All Time
You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note.
DOUG FLOYD
attributed, 1,600 Quotes & Pieces of Wisdom That Just Might Help You Out...
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
attributed, A View from the Cosmic Mirror
Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself -- educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
There is a socialization which turns curious children into adult automatons in a social environment of repressive uniformity, and there is a socialization which turns selfish, impulsive children into self-aware and deliberate participants in a larger community.
BENJAMIN R. BARBER
"Forced to Be Free"
That we have found the tendency to conformity in our society so strong ... is a matter of concern. It raises questions about our ways of education and about the values that guide our conduct.
SOLOMON ASCH
Psychological Monographs
Conformity, humility, acceptance--with these coins we are to pay our fares to paradise.
ROBERT LINDNER
Must You Conform?
But human beings are not machines, and however powerful the pressure to conform, they sometimes are so moved by what they see as injustice that they dare to declare their independence. In that historical possibility lies hope.
HOWARD ZINN
You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think -- in fact they do so.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The ABC of Relativity
We must beware of yielding to the pressure of a spirit of cowardly conformity which proclaims itself everybody's friend in the hope that everybody will obligingly return the compliment.
ANTONIN SERTILLANGES
The Intellectual Life
There's something in all of us that wants to drift toward a mob, where we can all say the same thing without having to think about it, because everybody is all alike except people that we can hate or persecute. Every time we use words, we're either fighting against this tendency or giving in to it.
NORTHROP FRYE
The Educated Imagination
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.
JON KRAKAUER
Into the Wild
Abnormal, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary