Conformity Quotes - Page 28

• We are what we were at birth, and each trait has remained in conformity with earth's and with heaven's logic: Be the devil's tool, resort to black magic, None can diverge from the ends which Heaven foreordained.

  Marianne Moore

  Heaven, Black, Magic

  Marianne Moore (1994). “Complete Poems”, p.260, Penguin

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• Rhetoric is useful because truth and justice are in their nature stronger than their opposites; so that if decisions be made, not in conformity to the rule of propriety, it must have been that they have been got the better of through fault of the advocates themselves: and this is deserving reprehension.

  Aristotle

  Opposites, Justice, Decision

  Aristotle (1890). “Aristotle's Treatise on Rhetoric, Literally Tr. with Hobbes' Analysis, Examination Questions and an Appendix Containing the Greek Definitions: Also, The Poetic of Aristotle, Literally Tr., with a Selection of Notes, an Analysis, and Questions”

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• One of the useful things about age is realizing conventional wisdom is often simply inertia with a candy coating of conformity.

  Anna Quindlen

  Age, Realizing, Useful Things

  Anna Quindlen (2012). “Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake: A Memoir of a Woman's Life”, p.42, Random House

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• The truth of practical intellect is understood not as conformity to an extramental being but as conformity to a right desire; the end is no longer to know what is, but to bring into existence that which is not yet.

  Jacques Maritain

  Desire, Ends, Existence

  "Action: the Perfection of Human Life" by Jacques Maritain, Sewanee Review, LV (pp. 3-4), 1948.

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• How are we to adjudicate among rival ontologies? Certainly the answer is not provided by the semantical formula "To be is to be the value of a variable"; this formula serves rather, conversely, in testing the conformity of a given remark or doctrine to a prior ontological standard.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Doctrine, Answers, Variables

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Roger F. Gibson (2004). “Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W.V. Quine”, p.189, Harvard University Press

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• I can understand the frustration felt by the many basketball players who feel that they have been forced to conform with the league's new dress code, .. Iverson and other NBA players have suggested that they will not abide by the league's dress code, and Bodog.com will offer to reimburse any fines levied, and match the payment with a donation to each player's charity of choice.

  Calvin Ayre

  Basketball, Frustration, Player

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• Some men -- not all men -- see always before them an ideal, a mental picture if you will, of what they ought to be, and are not. Whoso seeks to follow this ideal revealed to the mental vision, whoso seeks to attain to conformity with it, will find it enlarge itself, and remove from him. He that follows it will improve his own moral character, but the ideal will remain always above him and before him, prompting him to new exertions.

  William Batchelder Greene

  Character, Men, Vision

  William Batchelder Greene (1872). “The blazing star; with an appendix treating of the Jewish Kabbala, also a tract on the philosophy of H. Spencer, and one on New-England transcendentalism”, p.3

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• To each, therefore, must be given his own share of goods, and the distribution of created goods, which, as every discerning person knows, is laboring today under the gravest evils due to the huge disparity between the few exceedingly rich and the unnumbered propertyless, must be effectively called back to and brought into conformity with the norms of the common good, that is, social justice.

  Pope Pius XI

  Wisdom, Justice, Evil

  Catholic Church. Pope (1922-1939 : Pius XI), Pope Pius XI (1947). “On reconstructing the social order: (Quadragesimo anno)”

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• Long gone is the time when we opposed the notion that we all looked alike and talked alike. Somehow we have come to exalt the new black stereotype above all and to demand conformity to that norm... [However], I assert my right to think for myself, to refuse to have my ideas assigned to me as though I was an intellectual slave because I'm black.

  Clarence Thomas

  Thinking, Ideas, Long

  Clarence Thomas' Speech to the National Bar Association in Memphis, Tennessee, teachingamericanhistory.org. July 28, 1998.

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• It's the non-conformist who gives color to history.

  Dorothy Fuldheim

  Color, Giving, Non Conformist

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• It's terrible to allow conventional habits to gain a hold on a whole household; to eat, sleep and live by clock ticks.

  Zelda Fitzgerald

  Sleep, Gains, Tick

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• All of the evidence highlights the implicit bargain that is offered to citizens: pose no challenge and you have nothing to worry about. Mind your own business, and support or at least tolerate what we do, and you'll be fine. Put differently, you must refrain from provoking the authority that wields surveillance powers if you wish to be deemed free of wrongdoing. This is a deal that invites passivity, obedience, and conformity. The safest course, the way to ensure being “left alone,” is to remain quiet, unthreatening, and compliant.

  Glenn Greenwald

  Worry, Support, Challenges

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• Obviously, there are people who constrict themselves and build walls around themselves, whether it's from a moral standpoint or a patriotic standpoint, or just plain old conformity, and who therefore live in those little prisons, and when things breach those walls, it's shocking for them.

  George Carlin

  Wall, Patriotic, People

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I'm definitely good. I'm not bad; I'm extremely honest, and I allow no bullshit to pass by my radar. And that will always get lots of people thinking you're a jerk. But there are people who appreciate total honesty and questioning of the conformities in our society, and I'm heroic to those people. And I should be. It's an indictment of the rest of society who doesn't get that.

  Bill Maher

  Honesty, Thinking, Bullshit

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• What is called common sense is excellent in its department, and as invaluable as the virtue of conformity in the army and navy,--for there must be subordination,--but uncommon sense, that sense which is common only to the wisest, is as much more excellent as it is more rare.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Army, Common Sense, Navy

  Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.13, Yale University Press

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• Being a team player should not imply a demand for simple obedience and conformity.

  Alfie Kohn

  Team, Simple, Player

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