Quotes About Conformity

Mediocrity would always win by force of numbers, but it would win only more mediocrity.

School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know.

Beat up 10 guys, win the girl, and yet you are supposed to be a normal human being. I don't mind doing that as a superhero but not as a real person!

The first time I wore a head scarf, I was 16. I looked and felt like a nun. I missed the wind in my hair. For me, it was not a comfortable thing to wear.

So many people treat you like you're a kid so you might as well act like one and throw your television out of the hotel window.

If there was a distraction I'd get up and jump out the window. I was quite out of hand. In schools like that I don't think they expect that girls are going to behave in such an outrageous fashion.

I am pretty standard, the way I dress, but matching the belt to the shoe - you know, brown belt, brown shoe, black belt black shoe - that's completely out of the window! I had no idea.

I want to break down the wall of, you know, you have to put on a jacket and tie, and you have to act a certain way, and you have to know how to order the right kind of wine. All these things have suddenly been built up around jazz and the way it's presented.

The biggest downside of my current job is that I have to wear a suit to work. Wearing uncomfortable clothes on purpose is an example of what former Princeton hockey player and Nobel Prize winner Michael Spence taught economists to call 'signaling.'

And from a military school which taught me that to fit into society, you can't just do anything you damn well please because it will suit you. And that it's much better to be with the winners than it is with the losers.

People were telling me it was refreshing I was real because previous 'X Factor' winners were too afraid to say anything. I decided to go against the grain. But I took it too far.

I got beat up up in Texas because my bootlaces were the wrong color.

I went to high school in Frisco, Texas, where a lot of people look the same, dress the same, act the same. People are either like, 'You're not black enough for this' or 'You're not white enough for this.'

I didn't care about that because I'm not a diplomatic person to begin with. I just went along with things and did what I wanted to do because I knew they had to shoot their 12 pages a day. And when they realized that I didn't alter the text they really didn't mind what I did.

The finest clothing made is a person's own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.

I don't know how to thank all the people listening to our music. It's so amazing to come home to my friends who resist conformity, because they're so happy that I've made it.

The hardest thing about being in this business is just being able to be yourself. People act like there's this one set of rules to follow to be a pop star and I think, 'Well, you say I'm a pop star, so maybe that's not true.'

Emotions were never the most important thing when I was at school; it was all about academics and this constant performance of pretending that you're okay and getting on with life.

Fast food is the one thing everyone can relate to. It's depressing, but also interesting, that people desire to eat the same sandwich in every single city in the world. But the biggest bummer is when you see a Subway in Berlin. Just devastating.

We try to make sensible decisions with the facts in front of us. The problem with sensible decisions is that so is everyone else.

Government has really been growing, a lot of largesse, but the people in the real world aren't. And that's what has to change. Government has no conformity at all with the real world.

You've got all these books on self help, getting to know yourself, doing the right thing, eating the so-called right foods, even down to what books you have on your shelves. People are encouraged to look to themselves first as opposed to being a part of society.

Rebellion is not always the right thing. Following the rules is not always the right thing. You have to think for yourself and identify the things that do not work for you.

I'd like to not have to worry about image, about doing the right thing all the time. Not that I want to be a criminal or anything. I'd like to be able to do something wrong and not feel the whole world will know.