quotations about conformity
Conformity is inevitable when folks huddle together in rebellion.
HERBERT GOLD
"Protocols of the Elders of Bohemia"
Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of "crackpot" than the stigma of conformity.
THOMAS WATSON
The Greatest Quotations of All Time
One of the saddest things about conformity is the ghastly sort of non-conformity it breeds: the noisy protesting, the aggressive rebelliousness, the rigid counterfetishism.
LOUIS KRONENBERGER
Company Manners
The opposite of bravery is not cowardice but conformity.
ROBERT ANTHONY
The Ultimate Secrets of Total Self-Confidence
Conformity is a problem for many small groups. Members put a higher priority on cohesion than on coming up with a well-reasoned choice. They pressure dissenters, shield themselves from negative feedback, keep silent when they disagree.
CRAIG E. JOHNSON
Meeting the Ethical Challenges of Leadership
Conformity--the natural instinct to passively yield to that vague something recognized as authority.
MARK TWAIN
The Wit & Wisdom of Mark Twain
Alas, everything that men say to one another is alike; the ideas they exchange are almost always the same, in their conversation. But inside all those isolated machines, what hidden recesses, what secret compartments! It is an entire world that each one carries within him, an unknown world that is born and dies in silence! What solitudes all these human bodies are!
ALFRED DE MUSSET
Fantasio
A "Normal" person is the sort of person that might be designed by a committee. You know, each person puts in a pretty color and it comes out gray.
ALAN SHERMAN
attributed, Quote Unquote
The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Self-Reliance", Essays
In individualistic cultures, conformity is seen as a sign of weakness ... people want to stand out and be different, and we admire people who differentiate themselves from the crowd.... In contrast, people in collectivistic cultures often place a particular value on fitting in with others and conforming to social norms, and therefore conformity is seen as a sign of self-control, maturity, tolerance, and respect for others.
CATHERINE A. SANDERSON
Social Psychology
He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
attributed, Teachers of Wisdom
You're afraid to see where it's leading. I'm not. I'll tell you. The world of the future. The world I want. A world of obedience and unity. A world where the thought of each man will not be his own, but an attempt to guess the thought in the brain of his neighbor who'll have no thought of his own but an attempt to guess the thought of the next neighbor who'll have no thought--and so on.
AYN RAND
The Fountainhead
Conformity is the ape of harmony.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
journals, 1840
A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
attributed, The Best Liberal Quotes Ever
Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?
JAMES THURBER
attributed, Oxymoronica
Sophistication is upscale conformity.
JAMES RICHARDSON
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
The Wisdom of JFK
It takes far more courage to violate a custom than a law.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species, bent on ensuring his salvation, security, and sanity.
THOMAS STEPHEN SZASZ
The Untamed Tongue
Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity.
MAYA ANGELOU
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings