quotes about Conformity
-
In ourselves we harbor the intuition of another evolution, of other possibilities of life.
-- Abdellatif Laabi -
Communism is the death of the soul. It is the organization of total conformity - in short, of tyranny - and it is committed to making tyranny universal.
-- Adlai E. StevensonSource : "Books of the Times" by Charles Poore, The New York Times, p. 23, April 20, 1953.
-
He ... knew, in that instant, that his life would not be an easy one-he was different, he looked different, he thought differently.
-- Alan Cumming -
-
Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will.
-- Aleister Crowley -
Tess was my first experience of a woman who had inhabited her weirdness, moved into the areas of herself that made her distinct from those around her, and learned how to display them proudly.
-- Alice SeboldSource : Alice Sebold (2009). “Lucky”, p.124, Simon and Schuster
-
Fear, safety, and conformity make you mediocre and average
-- Alonzo King -
It's both rebellion and conformity that attack you with success.
-- Amy Tan -
-
When I was younger, not being accepted made me enraged, but now, I am not inclined to dismantle my history. If you banish the dragons, you banish the heroes-and we become attached to the heroic strain in our personal history.
-- Andrew SolomonSource : Andrew Solomon (2012). “Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity”, p.46, Simon and Schuster
-
Sin is lack of conformity to the moral law of God, either in act, disposition, or state
-- Augustus Hopkins StrongSource : Augustus Hopkins Strong (2014). “Systematic Theology : Volume II (Illustrated)”, p.312, Lulu Press, Inc
-
Great thoughts are against all doctrines of conformity
-- Austin Osman Spare -
Knowledge is the conformity of the object and the intellect.
-- AverroesSource : Tahafut at-tahafut (ca. 1180)
-
-
With the spread of conformity and image-driven superficiality, the allure of an individuated woman in full possession of herself and her powers will prove irresistible. We were born for plenitude and inner fulfillment.
-- Betsy Prioleau -
Unfortunately what came out of it was also kind of an imitation community with a lot of mindless conformity.
-- Bill Griffith -
-
A person's willingness to conform to arbitrary parameters is not a good criterion for selecting talent or allocating rewards.
-- Bruce Tulgan -
The marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading "Keep Off.
-- Carl Sandburg -
If you stand up to the human race you lose something called their 'goodwill'; if you kowtow to them you gain ... their permission to continue kowtowing.
-- Celia GreenSource : Celia Elizabeth Green (1976). “The decline and fall of science”, Hamish Hamilton
-
We are half ruined by conformity, but we should be wholly ruined without it.
-- Charles Dudley Warner -
-
Most people are more comfortable with old problems than with new solutions.
-- Charles H. BrowerSource : Interview With Bob Morris, bobmorris.biz. May 10, 2015.
-
All moral obligation resolves itself into the obligation of conformity to the will of God.
-- Charles Hodge -
Character is always lost when a high ideal is sacrificed on the altar of conformity and popularity.
-- Charles Spurgeon -
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 -
-
Great fear, conformity, immorality: these are heavy burdens. They drain us of creative energy. And when we are drained of creative energy, we do not create. We procreate, but we do not create.
-- David McCallum -
It's the non-conformist who gives color to history.
-- Dorothy Fuldheim -
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.
-- Edward R. Murrow -
Men cannot make Scripture conform to their lifestyle; they must make their lifestyle conform to Scripture.
-- Edwin Louis Cole -
-
Never say No when the world says Aye.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning -
Remember: Bureaucracy elevates conformity ... Make that elevates 'fatal stupidity' to the status of religion.
-- Frank Herbert -
If you take responsibility for what you are doing to yourself, how you produce your symptoms, how you produce your illness, how you produce your existence-the very moment you get in touch with yourself-growth begins, integration begins.
-- Frederick Salomon Perls -
-
Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good.
-- George Santayana -
Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
-- H. L. Mencken -
One must never forbid oneself anything. One must also be able to go back, one must always be able to change...
-- Hans HartungSource : Hans Hartung, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.) (1975). “Hans Hartung: Paintings, 1971-1975 : [exhibition], October 16, 1975-January 4, 1976 : [catalogue].”, p.25, Metropolitan Museum of Art
-
The aim of every authentic artist is not to conform to the history of art, but to release himself from it in order to replace it with his own history.
-- Harold RosenbergSource : Harold Rosenberg (1983). “Art on the Edge: Creators and Situations”, p.64, University of Chicago Press
-
-
The American people...have a stake in non-conformity. For they know that the American genius is non-conformist.
-- Henry Steele Commager -
Conformity is inevitable when folks huddle together in rebellion.
-- Herbert GoldSource : Herbert Gold (1994). “Bohemia: Digging the Roots of Cool”, Touchstone Books
-
These are the sensations and feelings that are gradually blunted by education, staled by custom, rejected in favor of social conformity.
-- Herbert Read -
It is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it.
-- Hunter S. Thompson -
-
To be ones self and unafraid whether right or wrong is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity.
-- Irving Wallace -
Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime.
-- Jacob Bronowski -
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 -
Sophistication is upscale conformity.
-- James RichardsonSource : James Richardson (2016). “By the Numbers”, p.45, Copper Canyon Press
-
-
One must do no violence to nature, nor model it in conformity to any blindly formed chimera.
-- Janos Bolyai -
Holiness is nothing less than conformity to the character of God
-- Jerry Bridges -
If I decide to be an idiot, then I'll be an idiot on my own accord.
-- Johann Sebastian Bach -
Let's all be different same as me.
-- John BrunnerSource : John Brunner (2014). “The Shockwave Rider”, p.87, Open Road Media
-
-
Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity.
-- John Taylor Gatto -
Norwegian legislation is more in conformity with the rules of the European Union than most member states.
-- Jose Manuel Barroso -
Schools are generally feminine places, institutions where conformity is valued, taught largely by conformist women.
-- Judith M BardwickSource : Judith M. Bardwick (1972). “Readings on the psychology of women”, HarperCollins Publishers
-
-
Non-conformity is the only real passion worth being ruled by.
-- Julian Assange -
A big element of what they regard as conformity is simply a desire to have an audience.
-- Karel Reisz -
Whenever I'm asked to identify my best work, or my favorite, my answer has always been the same - 'My next one!'
-- Ken Danby -
When I conform to truth, I do not conform to an abstract principle; I conform to the nature of God.
-- Kenneth Lee Pike -
-
What we need is equality without conformity.
-- Kim Stanley RobinsonSource : Kim Stanley Robinson (2003). “Green Mars”, p.365, Spectra
-
When some folks agree with my opinions I begin to suspect I'm wrong.
-- Kin Hubbard -
As an artist, it is central to be unsatisfied.
-- Lawrence Calcagno -
All my work keeps going like a pendulum; it seems to swing back to something I was involved with earlier, or it moves between horizontality and verticality, circularlity, or a composite of them. For me, I suppose, that change is the only constant.
-- Lee KrasnerSource : Robert Carleton Hobbs, Lee Krasner (1993). “Lee Krasner”, Abbeville Press
-
-
Conformity may not always reign in the prosperous bourgeois suburb, but it ultimately always governs.
-- Louis Kronenberger -
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.
-- Louis Kronenberger -
We're so many, we're so hard to distinguish from each other, but we long to be distinguished ...
-- Lydia MilletSource : Lydia Millet (2005). “Oh Pure and Radiant Heart”, p.166, Soft Skull Press
-
I would rather be a man of conviction than a man of conformity
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. -
-
I cannot change the world, but I do not have to conform.
-- Marva Collins -
I find the earth to be a place of misery in which I am surrounded by the conformity that kills society.
-- Matt LeBlanc -
None can know their election but by their conformity to Christ; for all who are chosen are chosen to sanctification.
-- Matthew Henry -
Seeds have the power to preserve species, to enhance cultural as well as genetic diversity, to counter economic monopoly and to check the advance of conformity on all its many fronts.
-- Michael Pollan -
-
Broadly speaking, most people lived their lives in a kind of unwilling conformity. The thing was that they were offered, as time went by, various kinds of freedom, most of which were sort of dummy freedoms somehow.
-- Neal Ascherson -
The search for truth is a cooperative, unending endeavor. We can, and should, engage in it to the extent we can and encourage others to do so as well, seeking to free ourselves from constraints imposed by coercive institutions, dogma, irrationality, excessive conformity and lack of initiative and imagination, and numerous other obstacles.
-- Noam Chomsky -
Becoming is superior to being.
-- Paul KleeSource : Paul Klee, Will Grohmann (1985). “Paul Klee”, Harry N. Abrams
-
I am neither for conformity nor non-conformity. I am for individuality. If one's individuality is in effect non-conformity, then so be it. But basically, one's individuality consists of conformity--to one's self.
-- Paul Krassner -
-
Officers conditioned to conformity in peacetime cannot be expected to behave boldly and flexibly in combat.
-- Paul Yingling -
Being strange is not necessarily bad ... Sometimes it's a person's only redeeming quality.
-- Paula Sharp -
Isolation and belonging are not absolute, provable states of being. They arise completely out of the nothingness within you; you measure their dimensions against your own firm or shaky sense of who you are.
-- Paula SharpSource : Paula Sharp (2000). “I Loved You All”, Hyperion
-
-
I am moving deeper into my own brain.
-- Peter PorterSource : Peter Porter (1972). “Preaching to the converted”, Not Avail
-
To be a hero you have to learn to be a deviant — because you're always going against the conformity of the group.
-- Philip Zimbardo -
I am convinced that creativity is a priori to the integrity of the universe and that life is regenerative and conformity meaningless.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller -
Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson -
-
I don't follow any system. All the laws you can lay down are only so many props to be cast aside when the hour of creation arrives.
-- Raoul DufySource : Raoul Dufy, Alfred Werner (1970). “Raoul Dufy”, Harry N Abrams Inc
-
Conformity to a sick society is to be sick.
-- Richard J. Foster -
We're all getting lashed to the great wheel of uniformity.
-- Robert James Waller -
-
He travels the fastest who travels alone.
-- Rudyard Kipling -
There is a light seed grain inside. You fill it with yourself, or it dies.
-- Rumi -
Is there an existence that is only mine?
-- Russell HobanSource : Russell Hoban (2012). “Kleinzeit”, p.134, A&C Black
-
perhaps, if one wishes to remain an individual in the midst of the teeming multitudes, one must make oneself grotesque.
-- Salman Rushdie -
-
... he who has independent ideas is hated by the mass[es].
-- Shang Yang -
... but I'm always being invaded by others' souls so I can't see my own soul very well.
-- Shuntaro Tanikawa -
To me it's awe-inspiring ... All those billions of little evolutionary steps leading to this sensation of being "me."
-- Simon Boswell -
-
My darling girl, when are you going to understand that "normal" isn't a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage.
-- Stockard Channing -
I am myself. That is not enough.
-- Sylvia PlathSource : Sylvia Plath (2015). “Collected Poems”, p.185, Faber & Faber
-
To be a genuine individualist requires a great deal of strength and courage. It is never easy to chart new territory, to cross new frontiers, or to introduce subtle shadings to an established color.
-- Toller Cranston -
Before you can think out of the box, you have to start with a box
-- Twyla Tharp -
-
The struggle to be original hates conformity, but the struggle to be better disregards it, or takes advantage of it to build workable conventions.
-- Walter Darby Bannard -
The opposite of courage is not so much fear as it is conformity.
-- Wayne Dyer -
Man..must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator, for he is entirely a dependent being..And, consequently, as man depends absolutely upon his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he should in all points conform to his Maker's will.
-- William Blackstone -
My surface is myself. Under which to witness, youth is buried. Roots? Everybody has roots.
-- William Carlos Williams -