Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
The reward for conformity is that everyone likes you but yourself.
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
The individual has always to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.
That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
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.
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.
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.
I think everybody's weird. We should all celebrate our individuality and not be embarrassed or ashamed of it.
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.
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.
They taught me different was wrong.
One of the saddest things about conformity is the ghastly sort of non-conformity it breeds; the noisy protesting, the aggressive rebelliousness, the rigid counter-fetishism.
All progress depends on the unreasonable man.
or simply:
