Quotes About Conformity

I had a terrible fear of not being normal - of not seeming normal. So I went to the library and read every psychology book I could find. Anything about how normal people behave.

I've always been interested in social psychology and why certain groups of people do things while others don't.

Publishers are very risk-averse, so they lean towards licenses and sequels. But the fact is that even those are not guaranteed hits. So, if 'playing it safe' does not guarantee hits, they might as well leave it up to the really creative, risk-taking people, because they couldn't do any worse.

It didn't matter that I wore clothes from Sears; I was still different. I looked different. My name was different. I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different.

Conforming happens so naturally that we can forget how powerful it is. But the thing that makes us human are those times we listen to the whispers of our soul and allow ourselves to be pulled in another direction.

I did my schooling at Holy Angels, where they had stringent rules. I coloured my hair blond and red and was pulled up by the principal.

In America, educators punish those who actually think for themselves. There is only acceptance for popular opinion.

The school was prone to dishing out punishments for anything creative that didn't fit with expectation - I just followed the logic and figured the folk club was probably much the same.

Those of us who have not had the experience of being invaded by the Germans are in no position to criticize those who accommodated themselves to German occupation, with its ferocious punishments for those who expressed even the mildest opposition.

Classes were incredibly boring. I took to dreaming. They took to punishing me. I was always working off punishments for not doing what I was supposed to do.

I've known a lot of people who were punkers who went on to get academic degrees. Very few of them, however, continued their active role in the punk community. Most of them hung up their leather jacket when they did so.

I suppose when I was growing up, it was all about fitting into a box or fitting into a category. You know, looking like I listened to hip-hop, or looking like I listened to grime. You'd see someone and go, 'Oh, look at that person. He's wearing that or that; he listens to punk rock.'

The people at the top of the league think they need to rein me in so I don't become another Michael Jordan, somebody they aren't able to mold and shape and make their puppet.

I grew up in an era where you had to find your own way as a woman. When I was a kid, there was this whole physical and emotional neatness and purity that a woman was supposed to have, and I didn't fit into that.

The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.

The pursuit of approval usually ends in disaster.

I was very pushed to look a certain way and act a certain way, and it wasn't me, but I played by their rules to get my foot in the door.

When I was young, I had this feeling that there was this handbook that I had never gotten that explained how to be, how to laugh, what to wear, how to stand by yourself in the hallway. Everyone looked so natural - like they all practiced and knew exactly what to do - even the way they pushed their hair out of their face.

When I was a kid, the avant-garde to me was boring because it was just the flip side of being really successful.

All the flower children were as alike as a congress of accountants and about as interesting.

The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.

I am a rule follower. I think rules are there for a reason. I don't like breaking them.

Those outside the church expect followers of Christ to live differently, yet today many in church are chasing after the world - not to win them, but to be like them.

Everything's always about being homogenized and following in a group. The people who stand out always have the most problems.