quotations about conformity
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.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
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"Self-Reliance", Essays
He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
attributed, Teachers of Wisdom
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
The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species, bent on ensuring his salvation, security, and sanity.
THOMAS STEPHEN SZASZ
The Untamed Tongue
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
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
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
attributed, A View from the Cosmic Mirror
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"
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
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...
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
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
How deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden
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
Young men are pretty much like a drove of sheep; any one who takes a decided line on certain matters, is sure to lead all the rest.
THOMAS HUGHES
Tom Brown at Oxford
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
Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority.
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
Strength to Love
Conformity, humility, acceptance--with these coins we are to pay our fares to paradise.
ROBERT LINDNER
Must You Conform?
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
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