Conformity Quotes - Page 8

• The American ideal is, after all, that everyone should be as much alike as possible.

  James A. Baldwin

  Should, Ideals, Conform

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• It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.

  Eric Hoffer

  Dream, Past, Civilization

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• Never say No when the world says Aye.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  World

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1857). “Aurora Leigh”, p.15

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• Is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than that of face and stature.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Faces, Opinion, Uniformity

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• We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like.

  Richard J. Foster

  Reality, People, Sick

  "Richard Foster's treasury of Christian discipline".

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• Happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves.... The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement.

  Aristotle

  Happy Life, Long, Effort

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• Conformity may not always reign in the prosperous bourgeois suburb, but it ultimately always governs.

  Louis Kronenberger

  May, Reign, Bourgeois

  "Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life". Book by Louis Kronenberger, p. 122, 1954.

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• If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese?

  Edith Sitwell

  Trying, Looks, Pekingese

  Edith Sitwell (Dame), Elizabeth Salter, Allanah Harper (1976). “Edith Sitwell: fire of the mind : an anthology”, Michael Joseph

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• Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity.

  Maya Angelou

  Adults, Teens, Pressure

  Maya Angelou (2012). “The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou”, p.208, Modern Library

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• We arrange our lives-even the best and boldest men and women that exist, just as much as the most limited-with reference to what society conventionally rules and makes right.

  Walt Whitman

  Men, Men And Women, Our Lives

  Walt Whitman (2014). “Specimen Days & Collect”, p.402, Melville House

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• Adjustment, that synonym for conformity that comes more easily to the modern tongue, is the theme of our swan song, the piper's tune to which we dance on the brink of the abyss, the siren's melody that destroys our senses and paralyzes our wills.

  Robert M. Lindner

  Song, Swans, Tongue

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• Ideation is not a synonym for innovation, conformity is not its simple antonym, and innovation is not the automatic consequence of "creative thinking.".

  Theodore Levitt

  Simple, Thinking, Creative

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• We are not going to move this world by criticism of it nor conformity to it, but by the combustion within it of lives ignited by the Spirit of God.

  Vance Havner

  Christian, Moving, Criticism

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• When we become incorruptible and immortal, and attain to the blessed state of conformity with Christ, we will be ever with the Lord (as Scripture says), gaining fulfillment in the purest contemplations of His visible theophany which will illuminate us with its most brilliant rays, just as it illuminated the disciples at the time of the most divine Transfiguration.

  Gregory Palamas

  Christian, Blessed, Light

  "The Triads".

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• Many Christians have what we might call a 'cultural holiness.' They adapt to the character and behavior pattern of Christians around them...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.

  Jerry Bridges

  Christian, Character, Holiness

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• Americanization means the process of becoming an American. It means civic incorporation, becoming a part of the polity - becoming one of us. But that does not mean conformity. We are more than a melting pot, we are a kaleidoscope, where every turn of history refracts new light on the old promise.

  Barbara Jordan

  Mean, Light, Becoming One

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• Total surrender to the will of God actually is sacrificing oneself as a burnt offering to God. The proof of this state is dying to oneself, - to one's own opinions, wishes and feelings or tastes, in order to live by Divine intellect, in conformity with the Divine will and in partaking of God. In the forefront of this endeavor is our Lord and Savior. He surrendered the whole of Himself to God the Father, and us in Himself, 'For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones' (Eph. 5:30). So let us hasten in His footsteps?

  Lorenzo Scupoli

  Christian, Father, Sacrifice

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• The only reason I'm in fashion is to destroy the word conformity.

  Vivienne Westwood

  Fashion, Reason

  Vivienne Westwood, Ian Kelly (2014). “Vivienne Westwood”, p.407, Pan Macmillan

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• Learning emerges from discovery, not directives; reflection, not rules; possibilities, not prescriptions; diversity, not dogma; creativity and curiosity, not conformity and certainty; and meaning, not mandates.

  Stephanie Pace Marshall

  Creativity, Reflection, Discovery

  Stephanie Pace Marshall (2006). “The Power to Transform: Leadership That Brings Learning and Schooling to Life”, p.38, John Wiley & Sons

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• The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by
  the object of its love: he who loveth mean and sordid things
  doth thereby become base and vile; but a noble
  and well placed affection doth advance and improve the spirit
  into a conformity with the perfections which it loves.

  Henry Scougal

  Mean, Perfection, Soul

  Henry Scougal (1775). “The life of God in the soul of man. Or, The nature and excellency of the Christian religion. And An account of the beginnings and advances of a spiritual life. 2 letters [by H. Scougal. With a preface by G. Burnet].”, p.31

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• Conformities are called for much more eagerly today than yesterday... skeptics, liberals, individuals with a taste for private life and their own inner standards of behavior, are objects of fear and derision and targets of persecution for either side... in the great ideological wars of our time.

  Isaiah Berlin

  War, Tyrants, Yesterday

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• One must recently have lived on or close to a college campus to have a vivid intimation of what has happened. It is there that we see how a number of energetic social innovators, plugging their grand designs, succeeded over the years in capturing the liberal intellectual imagination. And since ideas rule the world, the ideologues, having won over the intellectual class, simply walked in and started to run things. Run just about everything. There never was an age of conformity quite like this one, or a camaraderie quite like the Liberals'.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Running, College, Years

  "Publisher's Statement" in the first issue of National Review, November 19, 1955.

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• It seems to me that the best way will be the one that is most gentle and forbearing, which is more in conformity with the Spirit of Our Lord and more apt to win hearts.

  Vincent de Paul

  Heart, Winning, Way

  Saint Vincent de Paul, Pierre Coste (1992). “Correspondence, conferences, documents”, New City Pr

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• In school, I learned about artists and how they were free to express themselves. I was allergic to conformity, and the lifestyle attracted me. I wanted to express myself in a way that slammed people up against the wall.

  Grace Slick

  Wall, School, Artist

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• Instincts under pressure crush the carbon of conformity and create diamonds. Each new season of life offers to train us for the next season if we pay attention and adapt.

  T. D. Jakes

  Inspirational, Crush, Pay

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