Best 436 quotes in «conformity quotes» category

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!

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

A whole nation cannot rise above itself.

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

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

Being different is dangerous in a world that requires conformity

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Conform and be dull.

Conformity rules society not wisdom or simplicity.

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

Convention (is) so often a mask for injustice.

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.

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.

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

Do not follow conformity toward the darkness. Follow the light of wisdom to fill the world with happiness.

Disrobe both conformity and rebellion to find true independence.

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 just conform; ask questions. Don't just believe if it isn't your truth. Don't follow dogma; it is blindness. Just love; don't kill to go to heaven.

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

Don’t conform to those who have been overwhelmed by the tide of immorality sweeping our country!

Emily Dickinson sublimely unnames even the blanks.

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.

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.

Everyone knows that children and teens want to blend in and follow the crowd. And from whom do they learn this lesson? Adults, of course. Let's face it: Americans follow the herd. If you want to be successful, we are told in myriad ways, conformity is the way to go. Look at corporate America, with its "team player" ethic and all the strict rules delineating what you can and cannot wear on Casual Fridays. Consider the cycles of women's fashion, which dictate when square-toed, chunky-heeled shoes are out and when pointy-toed, ankle-straining stilettos are in. And what about best-seller lists and electoral horse-race polls and movie box-office postings? Everyone wants to know what everyone else is reading and seeing and thinking--so that they can go out and read and see and think the very same things themselves. If adults possess this tendency to efface themselves in this way, teenagers have it magnified to the thousandth degree. But studying and following the fashions of the times are not enough; teens also feel a need to be associated with fashionable people--the popular people. Their goal is to crack the glass ceiling that separates mere mortals from the "in" crowd. If they are unsuccessful, and most are, they console themselves with a clique of their own. Even an unpopular clique is, the thinking goes, is better than no clique at all.

Group pressure is also a fascinating process to watch. Given enough arguments, time, and stress, even the most resolute and determined man can be made fearful enough to completely reverse his ideals to conform with everyone else.

Evil would always come to me disguised in systems and dignified by law.

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.

Free spirits don't run in packs.

Great people have one thing in common: they do not conform.

for me obedience to another is the decay of self

For the first time, a whole generation had the economic & educational opportunity to turn their backs on the dead end factory jobs of their parents, who, traumatized by two world wars, had responded by creating a safety blanket of conformity.

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