quotations about conformity
So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure.
JON KRAKAUER
Notice: Undefined variable: id in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/c/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 37
Into the Wild
Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself -- educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
There's something in all of us that wants to drift toward a mob, where we can all say the same thing without having to think about it, because everybody is all alike except people that we can hate or persecute. Every time we use words, we're either fighting against this tendency or giving in to it.
NORTHROP FRYE
The Educated Imagination
Perhaps, if one wishes to remain an individual in the midst of the teeming multitudes, one must make oneself grotesque.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Midnight's Children
The race of men, while sheep in credulity, are wolves for conformity.
CARL VAN DOREN
attributed, The Harper Book of Quotations
I would prefer to speak openly and like an oracle to give answers serviceable to all mankind, even though no one should understand me, rather than to conform to popular opinions and so win the praise freely scattered by the mob.
EPICURUS
"Vatican Sayings", XXIX
The biggest problem with this staid world was the overwhelming demand for conformity. Everything was so eerily definitive: assent to the mandates of society would see you on the rise, but dissent was a steady downward path.
DJANGO WYLIE
The Middle
In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.
PETER USTINOV
The Wit of Peter Ustinov
Trumpet in a herd of elephants;
Crow in the company of cocks;
Bleat in a flock of goats.
MALAY PROVERB
"But," said Emma, "one must, after all, follow, to a certain extent, the opinion of the world and conform to its morality."
"Ah! but then there are two moralities. The petty, the conventional one, that of men, that which varies unceasingly and bawls so loudly, that one grovels below, close to the earth, like this assembly of idiots which you behold. But the other, the eternal, is all around and above us, like the landscape that encircles us and the blue heaven that gives us light."
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Madame Bovary