Quotes about Conformity

We should never allow our fears or the expectations of others to set the frontiers of our destiny.

Non conformists are often misunderstood.

"The most difficult battle you ever fight is the battle to be unique in a world that will marshal its every force to keep you the same."

What good is it for one to gain the whole world, yet forfeit one's soul?

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.

You were born an original. Don't die a copy.

All I know is, if you listen to society, you'll never get anywhere!

We're all afloat in a boundless sea, and the way we cope is by massing together in groups and pretending in unison that the situation is other than it is.  We reinforce the illusion for each other.  That's what a society really is, a little band of humanity huddled together against the specter of a pitch black sea.  Everyone is treading water to keep their heads above the surface even though they have no reason to believe that the life they're preserving is better than the alternative they're avoiding.  It's just that one is known and one is not.  Fear of the unknown is what keeps everyone busily treading water.  All fear is fear of the unknown.  If someone in such a group of water-treaders betrays the group lie by speaking the truth of their situation, that person is called a heretic, and society reserves its most awful punishments for heretics.  If someone decides to stop struggling and just sink or float away, every possible effort is made to stop him, not for the benefit of the individual, but for the benefit of the group.  To deny at all costs the truth of the situation.

"Why is it so important--what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right--so long as it's not yourself? Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter or arithmetic--and only of addition at that? Why is everything twisted out of all sense to fit everything else? There must be some reason. I don't know. I've never known it. I'd like to understand."

--Howard Roark

To be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others, and yet to comply with what others want causes us to be exiled from ourselves.

If none of us ever read a book that was
'dangerous,' nor had a friend who was 'different,' or never joined an
organization that advocated 'change,' we would all be just the kind of
people Joe McCarthy wants.

We begin life with the world presenting itself to us as it is.  Someone - our parents, teachers, analysts - hypnotizes us to "see" the world and construe it in the "right" way.  These others label the world, attach names and give voices to the beings and events in it, so that thereafter, we cannot read the world in any other language or hear it saying other things to us.  The task is to break the hypnotic spell, so that we become undeaf, unblind and multilingual, thereby letting the world speak to us in new voices and write all its possible meanings in the new book of our existence.  Be careful in your choice of hypnotists. 

Unless one decorates one's house for oneself alone, best leave it bare, for other people are walleyed. 

Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or that our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than we suspect of what we think.

Yield to all and you will soon have nothing to yield.

Conformity is that jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth. 

Yield to all and you will soon have nothing to yield.

If everyone is thinking alike then somebody isn't thinking.

One dog barks at something, and a hundred bark at the bark.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. 

When I was four years old they tried to test my IQ, they showed me this picture of three oranges and a pear.  They asked me which one is different and does not belong, they taught me different was wrong.

We need - and should encourage and honour - not only discoverers of facts hitherto unknown but explorers of ideas and rethinkers of values.

One who walks in another's tracks leaves no footprints.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me.  The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.

Do not follow where the path may lead.  Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.

Don't think you're on the right road just because it's a well-beaten path.

The difference between a healthy group or organization and an unhealthy one lies in its members' awareness and ability to acknowledge their felt needs to conform.

The opposite of courage is not so much fear as it is conformity.