Nonconformity Quotes

• Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.

  Jack Kerouac

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

  106 Copy quote

• If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Success, Music, Forgiveness

  Walden ch. 18 (1854). Frequently quoted as "marches to the tune of a different drummer."

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

  John F. Kennedy

  Inspirational, Being Yourself, Freedom

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.

  Dr. Seuss

  Life, Smile, Graduation

  1884 Copy quote

• For nonconformity the world will whip you with its displeasure.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  World, Whips, Displeasure

  3 Copy quote

• Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Life, Being Yourself

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.149, Princeton University Press

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• The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Education, Children, Growing Up

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.63, Penguin

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• No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Being Yourself, Lonely, Loneliness

  305 Copy quote

• Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication, and courage. But if we don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us --- and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.

  Carl Sagan

  Atheist, Ocean, Dedication

  94 Copy quote
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  It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

  Herman Melville

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, G. Thomas Tanselle (1987). “Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860: Volume Nine, Scholarly Edition”, p.247, Northwestern University Press

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• Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!

  George Bernard Shaw

  Forgiveness, Believe, Law

  22 Copy quote

• A free society cherishes nonconformity.
  It knows from the non-conformist, from the eccentric,
  have come many of the great ideas.

  Henry Steele Commager

  Ideas, Eccentric, Cherish

  24 Copy quote

• If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity.

  Bill Vaughan

  Funny, Hater, Witty

  18 Copy quote

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

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Motivational, Change

  Mark Twain (2016). “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain”, p.97, Chartwell

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• They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.

  Antonio Porchia

  Creativity, Criticism, Conformity

  19 Copy quote

• The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Peace, Lying, Commitment

  Martin Luther King, Jr. (2012). “A Gift of Love: Sermons from Strength to Love and Other Preachings”, p.17, Beacon Press

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• People would rather be wrong than be different.

  Henry Jacobsen

  Inspiration, People, Being Different

  15 Copy quote

• All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions. All change is the result of a change in the contemporary state of mind.

  Adlai E. Stevenson

  Success, Clever, Work

  "The Educated Citizen". Address at Princeton University, March 22, 1954.

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

  George Bernard Shaw

  Life, Motivational, Change

  Man and Superman "Maxims for Revolutionists" (1903) See Hawthorne 18

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• Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.

  Cecil Beaton

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  61 Copy quote

• It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.33, Broadway Books

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• The opposite of bravery is not cowardice but conformity.

  Robert Anthony

  Courage, Opposites, Bravery

  Robert Anthony (1986). “The Ultimate Secrets of Total Self-Confidence”, p.26, Penguin

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• Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals.

  Aldo Leopold

  Animal, Social, Attainment

  Aldo Leopold (1972). “Round River”, p.13, Oxford University Press

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  Those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter.

  Bernard Baruch

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

  218 Copy quote

• Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.

  Paulo Freire

  Educational, Learning, Creativity

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.34, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

  237 Copy quote

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