Conformity Quotes - Page 7

• If critics say your work stinks it's because they want it to stink and they can make it stink by scaring you into conformity with their comfortable little standards. Standards so low that they can no longer be considered "dangerous" but set in place in their compartmental understandings.

  Jack Kerouac

  Wisdom, Art, Powerful

  Jack Kerouac (2016). “The Unknown Kerouac: Rare, Unpublished, & Newly Translated Writings”, p.402, Library of America

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• There have been many measures taken to try to turn the educational system towards more control, more indoctrination, more vocational training, imposing a debt, which traps students and young people into a life of conformity... That's the exact opposite of [what] traditionally comes out of The Enlightenment. And there's a constant struggle between those. In the colleges, in the schools, do you train for passing tests, or do you train for creative inquiry?

  Noam Chomsky

  Educational, Taken, Struggle

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• 

  dreaming of the person you want to be is wasting the person you already are.

  Kurt Cobain

  Dream, Simple Life, Want

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• Because of social pressure, individualism is rejected by most people in favor of conformity. Thus the individual relies mainly upon the actions of others and neglects the meaning of his own personal life. Hence he sees his own life as meaningless and falls into the “existential vacuum” feeling inner void. Progressive automation causes increasing alcoholism, juvenile delinquency, and suicide.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Suicide, Fall, People

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• We laugh at sheep because sheep just follow the one in front. We humans have out-sheeped the sheep, because at least the sheep need a sheep dog to keep them in line. Humans keep each other in line. And they do it by ridiculing or condemning anyone who commits the crime, and that’s what it’s become, of being different.

  David Icke

  Dog, Sheep, Laughing

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• [E]ach of our voices has something unique to say. Not only should I not mold my life to the demands of external conformity; I can't even find the model by which to live outside myself. I can only find it within.

  Charles Taylor

  Unique, Voice, Mold

  Charles Taylor (1994). “Multiculturalism”, p.30, Princeton University Press

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• People would rather be wrong than be different.

  Henry Jacobsen

  Inspiration, People, Being Different

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• 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

  Pressure, Return, Spirit

  A. G. Sertillanges (1987). “The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods”, p.213, CUA Press

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• In conformity with the philosophy of Christ, let us make of our life a training for death.

  Maximus the Confessor

  Philosophy, Training, Christ

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• Men are recognizing that they have been forced to conform to a very narrow and rather two-dimensional picture of maleness and manhood that they have never had the freedom to question.

  Andrew Cohen

  Men, Two, Masculinity

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• The suppression of inner patterns in favor of patterns created by society is dangerous to us.

  Anais Nin

  Society, Favors, Patterns

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• There are many who say to the Lord, "I give myself wholly to Thee, without any reserve," but there are few who embrace the practice of this abandonment, which consists in receiving with a certain indifference every sort of event, as it happens in conformity with Divine Providence, as well afflictions as consolations, contempt and reproaches as honor and glory.

  Saint Francis de Sales

  Practice, Giving, Honor

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• A man may grow rich in Turkey even, if he will be in all respects a good subject of the Turkish government.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Turkeys, May

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Selected Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.106, Simon and Schuster

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• We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Differences, Tea

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.416, Simon and Schuster

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• The greater number of men are merely corporals.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Numbers, Greater

  Henry David Thoreau (1866). “Cape Cod”, p.239

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• I think the responsibility of pop stars is to liberate the masses. In that everyone can be whatever they wanna be. You can march to your own beat. It's so hard sometimes in our country because conformity is the way things are pushed.

  Adam Lambert

  Country, Stars, Responsibility

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• It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, that you shall speak so that they can understand you. Neither men nor toadstools grow so.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, America, Toadstools

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.190, Graphic Arts Books

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• Voting is not an act of political freedom. It is an act of political conformity. Those who refuse to vote are not expressing silence. They are screaming in the politician's ear: 'You do not represent me. This is not a process in which my voice matters. I do not believe you.'

  Wendy McElroy

  Believe, Voice, Voting

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• I imagine a school system that recognizes learning is natural, that a love of learning is normal, and that real learning is passionate learning. A school curriculum that values questions above answers...creativity above fact regurgitation...individuality above conformity.. and excellence above standardized performance..... And we must reject all notions of 'reform' that serve up more of the same: more testing, more 'standards', more uniformity, more conformity, more bureaucracy.

  Tom Peters

  Real, Creativity, School

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• There are two visions of America. One precedes our founding fathers and finds its roots in the harshness of our Puritan past. It is very suspicious of freedom, uncomfortable with diversity hostile to science, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous of personal autonomy. It sees America as a religious nation. It views patriotism as allegiance to God. It secretly adores coercion and conformity. Despite our constitution, despite the legacy of the Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of Americans and threatens our freedom.

  Sherwin Wine

  Religious, Father, Past

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• Institutions do all the things that are supposed to be bad. They impede personal exploration. They enforce conformity. But they often save us from our weaknesses and give meaning to life.

  David Brooks

  Giving, Weakness, Exploration

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• With reason, then, the common opinion of mankind, little affected by the few dissentients who have contended for the opposite view, has found in the careful study of nature, and in the laws of nature, the foundations of the division of property, and the practice of all ages has consecrated the principle of private ownership, as being pre-eminently in conformity with human nature, and as conducing in the most unmistakable manner to the peace and tranquility of human existence.

  Pope Leo XIII

  Wisdom, Views, Law

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• Always run to the short way; and the short way is the natural: accordingly say and do everything in conformity with the soundest reason. For such a purpose frees a man from trouble, and warfare, and all artifice and ostentatious display.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Running, Men, Atheism

  Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (2015). “Stoic Six Pack: Meditations of Marcus Aurelius The Golden Sayings Fragments and Discourses of Epictetus Letters from a Stoic and The Enchiridion”, p.22, Lulu.com

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• I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be made the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats still left to sow before they become submissive members of society. Undoubtedly, all men are not equally fit subjects for civilization; and because the majority, like dogs and sheep, are tame by inherited disposition, this is no reason why the others should have their natures broken that they may be reduced to the same level.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dog, Horse, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2002). “The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau: Selected and Edited by Lewis Hyde”, p.252, North Point Press

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• The Chains of conformity click in tiresomely monotonous unison.

  Leonard Sweet

  Unison, Chains, Clicks

  Leonard I. Sweet, Lance Ford (2011). “I Am a Follower: The Way, Truth, and Life of Following Jesus”, p.222, Thomas Nelson Inc

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