Quotes About Conformity

Muller began by distinguishing conservatism from orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is the view that there exists a "transcendent moral order, to which we ought to try to conform the ways of society.

When the "tribe switch"30 is activated, we bind ourselves more tightly to the group, we embrace and defend the group's moral matrix, and we stop thinking for ourselves.

In other words, people don't just blindly empathize; they don't sync up with everyone they see. We are conditional hive creatures. We are more likely to mirror and then empathize with others when they have conformed to our moral matrix than when they have violated it.

The sovereign power [or soft despot] extends its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules . . . it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd. ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, Democracy in America1

I went along agreeably until all that was left was agreeability.

Ve stát? jako je ten náš , m?l každý p?id?lenou roli: ty jsi ob??, a ty, ty jsi kat, a nikdo nem?l na vybranou, nikoho se neptali, jestli je s tím srozum?n, protože všichni byli zam?nitelní, ob?ti i katové.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong. —Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV

The real world was never cool enough for anyone to accept a costumed supervillain. Which

Normality is a paved road: It's comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it. —Vincent van Gogh

I wonder if we recognize the irony of telling people to act normal, because to act is to perform a role that isn't real. And I wonder if we truly understand what it does to a human being to tell them to pretend to be someone, or something, they are not, and how this demand requires people to repress, efface, and cover up who they really are.

Normal is like the horizon. The closer you get to it, the further away you are.

stamping out prejudice inevitably means making everybody share the same prejudice

You're still trying to be the kid your parents wanted.

To do exactly as your neighbors do is the only sensible rule.

I'm opposed to segregation. It's basically antisocial and gives rise to the worst kind of sexism... When a boy or girl has been forced along the straight and narrow for an unnatural length of time, most of them rush headlong into unexplored territory at the first brush with freedom. I think it causes a lot of disillusion and unhappiness.

Since every effort in our educational life seems to be directed toward making of the child a being foreign to itself, it must of necessity produce individuals foreign to one another, and in everlasting antagonism with each other.

The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime.

I was in the ROTC program. I remember once I was walking through campus and my instructor grabs me, and he's a real big guy, and yells, "It's been six weeks since I've seen you in camouflage class!" I said, "I'm getting good."

Qué caras! ¡Qué tipos! Era la burguesía anodina y zafia de todo el Globo pronta a volcarse en las entrañas del paquebote para recrearse en un viaje de circunvolución mediterránea que iba a durar un mes y del que volverían tan anodinos y tan zafios como se habían marchado, pero llenos de la soberbia y de la presunción que dan ciertos nombres de leyenda a quien los pronuncia sin estar habituado a ellos.

En España, la movilidad es muy difícil: te marcan de por vida en la casilla que creen que te corresponde.

Were I a nightingale, I would sing like a nightingale; were I a swan, like a swan. But as it is, I am a rational being, therefore I must sing hymns of praise to God.

Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale were I a swan, the part of a swan.

de lo que podemos considerar como el aspecto sórdido de la vida se origina en la conformidad de "lo que se hace". ¿Cuántos

You seem to fit the part all right. Your technical record is first-class. Your disciplinary record stinks to high heaven.' He eyed his listener blank faced. 'Two charges of refusing to obey a lawful order. Four for insolence and insubordination. One for parading with your cap on back to front. What on earth made you do that?' 'I had a bad attack of what-the-hell, sir,' explained Leeming.