Conformity Quotes
229 quotes
"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
"I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself."
"Any fool can make a ruleAnd any fool will mind it."
"A prison becomes a home when you have the key."
"Much Madness Is Divinest SenseMuch Madness is divinest Sense —To a discerning Eye —Much Sense — the starkest Madness —'Tis the MajorityIn this, as All, prevail —Assent — and you are sane —Demur — you're straightway dangerous —And handled with a Chain —"
"Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent."
"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."
"You can't be a rebel without the scars that come with it. Truth is, some days scars are just as ugly as they are beautiful."
"A soft and sheltered Christianity, afraid to be lean and lone, unwilling to face the storms and brave the heights, will end up fat and foul in the cages of conformity."
"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."
"When you are imprisoned by the rules of conformity, it tames your imaginative capacity and steals your free thinking abilities."
"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?"
"Blindly believing something often comes from societal conformity which is a sign of a lack of deep knowledge and imaginative consciousness."
"It is very difficult to break free from the prison of conformity and fixed false beliefs without changing our level of consciousness and awareness."
"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."
"Never rebel for the sake of rebelling, but always rebel for the sake of truth."
"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."
"Carl Schmitt could boast with some justice that the Nazi revolution was orderly and disciplined. But the reason lies not so much within the Nazis themselves as in the lack of an effective opposition. For millions the Nazi ideology did assuage their anxiety, did end their alienation, and did give hope for a better future. Other millions watched passively, not deeply committed to resistance. "Let them have a chance" was a typical attitude. Hitler took the chance and made the most of it."
George L. Mosse, Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich
"Most sane human beings who are over the age of six usually act or react not as per what they genuinely feel or really think but in accordance with the expectations of those around them."
"The average adult has had sex innumerable times more than they have formed an opinion of their own."
"Most human beings would have never been pained by the death of a human being if they had never seen a human being or pretending to be pained by that."
"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."
"Many of the boys and men who are regarded as immature by some females are so deemed merely because they do not want to get married someday … or soon."
"A closed conforming society is a sick society waiting to die from stagnation and inner illness. Only openness is the treatment."
"For true liberation, you do not need to fight. You simply have to change your thoughts and drift away from conformity, comfort, security, and certainty of life and embrace and enjoy the possibilities and magnificence of the uncertainty of life."
"A formal education will teach you how to conform with society. Self-education will teach you how to get out of conformity so that you can fill your life with adventure and beauty."
"The real tragedy of life is not the fear of darkness, but it is to conform and follow the darkness in spite of fear."
"The beauty of life does not reside in certainty or conformity. It resides in the infinite possibilities of uncertainty."
"At the age of four, you were an artist. And at seven, you were a poet."
"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."
Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
"I need not adapt in certain ways. I am in fact but a visitor to this world, an ephemeral gasp within its long, tired history, and, before anything else, a follower of Christ. By this alone I have the power not to shuffle away from the Faith, the power to break loose from these marching-shackles of ongoing cultural and political pretense."
"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."
"The right kind of education consists in understanding the child as he is without imposing upon him an ideal of what we think he should be. To enclose him in the framework of an ideal is to encourage him to conform, which breeds fear and produces in him a constant conflict between what he is and what he should be; and all inward conflicts have their outward manifestations in society."
"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."
Ivan Illich, The Right to Useful Unemployment and Its Professional Enemies
"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."
"When spontaneity and individuality and really good original stuff occurred in a classroom it was in spite of the instruction, not because of it. This seemed to make sense. He was ready to resign. Teaching dull conformity to hateful students wasn’t what he wanted to do."
Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
"It is often difficult to educate a child about the beauty of an open mind when he is a prisoner of societal conformity."
"True education expands your imagination. False education fills your mind with dogma and makes you a prisoner of conformity."
"The conformist is not born. He is made. I believe the brainwashing process begins in the schools and colleges."
"(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."
John Feinstein, A Civil War: Army vs. Navy - A Year Inside College Football's Purest Rivalry
"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."
"If you conform, you can never reform."
"We are not here to match and homogenize and agree on every point. One size of spirituality does not fit all. We are here to be our divine selves, boldly, passionately, respectfully, to the absolute best of our ability — and this, this is more than enough."
"We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything, than when we are at play."
"Freedom began on the day the first sheep wandered away from the herd."
"The forces of freedom and choice will always triumph against the forces of conformity and control."
"What are we all chasing? Nella wonders. To live, of course. To be unbound from the invisible ropes that Johannes spoke of in his study. Or to be happy in them, at least."
"We live in a world that has so many people striving to look normal to a bunch of people that are abnormal, in order to be accepted. What is normal is realizing that being accepted comes at a price that robs the world of the uniqueness that God has created you to be every time you minimize your personality to make someone like you."
"The greatest fear in the world is of the opinions of others. And the moment you are unafraid of the crowd you are no longer a sheep, you become a lion. A great roar arises in your heart, the roar of freedom."
"If we had to earn our age by thinking for ourselves at least once a year, only a handful of people would reach adulthood."
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