Best 436 quotes in «conformity quotes» category

Woe to him inside a non-conformist clique who does not conform to non-conformity.

A blackbird doesn't change its tune to suit the times.

You never do find out what makes you tick, and after a while it's unimportant.

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?

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

Am I corrupted if I believe that the people who think alike are more admirable and estimable than those who think for themselves? If no one thought differently, then where would our innovations come from? How would we ever advance beyond the status quo? Corruption isn't just moral or ethical in nature--rust is a form of corruption, one that eats away at its host like a parasite, constantly making it less than it was the day before. The belief that they should hold in greater esteem those who think alike is a form of rust, something that doesn't allow our young people to grow beyond the limitations already established by those who do think alike.

A more fundamental problem with labelling human distress and deviance as mental disorder is that it reduces a complex, important, and distinct part of human life to nothing more than a biological illness or defect, not to be processed or understood, or in some cases even embraced, but to be ‘treated’ and ‘cured’ by any means possible—often with drugs that may be doing much more harm than good. This biological reductiveness, along with the stigma that it attracts, shapes the person’s interpretation and experience of his distress or deviance, and, ultimately, his relation to himself, to others, and to the world. Moreover, to call out every difference and deviance as mental disorder is also to circumscribe normality and define sanity, not as tranquillity or possibility, which are the products of the wisdom that is being denied, but as conformity, placidity, and a kind of mediocrity.

An artist who conforms to conventional ideas is nothing but a mere charlatan.

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

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.

All to often, on the long road up, young leaders become servants of what is rather than shapers of what might be.

American culture is a sheep culture—long on talk about individualism, but even longer on absolute conformity. Most still believe that individuality is based on which model car you like best—commodity identity, a selection of personalities on a shelf full of products approved by the Federal Identity Administration. I’m a Taurus aspiring to be a Lexus.

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

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.

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!

Being a good person is not nearly as honourable as being yourself.

Being different is dangerous in a world that requires conformity

Much Madness Is Divinest Sense Much Madness is divinest Sense — To a discerning Eye — Much Sense — the starkest Madness — 'Tis the Majority In this, as All, prevail — Assent — and you are sane — Demur — you're straightway dangerous — And handled with a Chain —

But I still wonder how it was possible, in those graceless years of transition, long ago, that men did not see whither they were going, and went on, in blindness and cowardice

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.

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.

Christians should be cultural and intellectual thermostats, exulting in opposition, iconoclasm,and balancing insights.

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

Conformity is a cage that confines our ability to think. It is a cage that hinders growth and deters individualism

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 ...

Conformity is often more dangerous than war. War destroys the body but confomity destoys the imaginative mind.

Conformity makes us blind. Our unwillingness to change keeps us blind.

Convention, like Saturn, is a jealous god and eats its babies.

Dehypnotize the world, my friend, and you shall witness the dawn of real religion – the religion, not of books, but of people.

Do not go for conformity that breeds mediocrity! Choose instead to stand for transformation that does not only transforms lives, but true purpose and living as well.

Don Quixote did not sleep at all that night but thought of his lady Dulcinea, in order to conform to what he had read in his books of knights spending many sleepless nights in groves and meadows, turning all their thoughts to memories of their ladies.

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

Don't stay in the harbour and miss the greatness of the sea. Just because everyone else is anchored, doesn't mean you have to be.

Emily Dickinson sublimely unnames even the blanks.

Even though we think we have individuality, we still have a herd mentality. We often follow the dare-devil knowing that it is dangerous. We cling to conformity. We only transform when we reach awareness and consciousness. Then we will find true liberty.

A whole nation cannot rise above itself.

Before you speak your mind make sure it's really your mind you're speaking.

Being on the side of the majority is often a sign that you are wrong, or the most unlikely to be right.

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

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.

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

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 death squads, 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.

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

Conformity rules society not wisdom or simplicity.

Conform and be dull.

Conformity is a machine for creating boredom.

Conformity is a type of calm where you hover motionless on the edge of a scream that never comes.

Convention (is) so often a mask for injustice.

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

Decadence, decadence, he said to himself. They’ve lost everything and gained nothing. The French had merely daubed on the finishing touches at the end of a process which had begun five hundred years ago, at least. Their intuitive moral desires coincided with the ideals embodied in the formulas of their religion, yet they could live in accordance neither with those deepest impulses nor with the precepts of the religion, because society came in between with all the pressure of its tradition. No one could afford to be honest or generous or merciful because every one of them distrusted all the others; often they had more confidence in a Christian they were meeting for the first time than in a Moslem they had known for years.