Quotes About Conformity

Theocratic societies governed by priestly castes are usually static and monopolize thought. They insist on orthodox explanations and actively discourage independent and unconventional ideas. Today's beliefs must always be like yesterday's.

These were the idiots shat out by West Point, turds in starched uniforms and glistening high-and-tight haircuts, shiny-foreheaded future corporate executives who used words like envisionment instead of vision.

Cafés used to be unique places for unique minds, now they are standardized places for standardized minds.

Most of us spend most of our time in other peoples' worlds — working at predetermined jobs, relaxing to pre-packaged entertainment — and no matter how benign this ready-made world may be, there will always be times when something is missing or doesn't quite ring true.

Members of society must obey the law because they personally believe that its commands are justified.

The truth is, I didn't think wind farms were an effective means of alternative energy so I said so. Back then, at the BBC you had to toe the line and I wasn't doing that.

The life you think you should want ... is always the life that looks safest.

the general public enjoys reading any book, of any kind, that is being read by the public generally, through much that herd instinct for doing what everybody else is doing, which exalts sane women upon three-inch heels, and attaches buttons to the sleeves and coat-tails of presumably intelligent men.

If all that a stone is expected to be is the stone that it is, why isn't a man expected to be the kind of man that he is instead of someone's idea of what man he should be?

Grown men who insist on wearing water shoes to the grocery store deserve all the ridicule which is heaped upon them

All it really seems to prove is that if you assemble a number of like-minded people, who share a certain view of sheltering and how it should be done, a test will confirm that they agree with each other most of the time about what sheltering means.

You cannot attempt to suggest much less try to explain this to normal people inside the box and is why I always throw in the monkey wrench option of doing it the social way

Roughly fifty percent of procedure in a Marine basic-training program is about disconnecting the young American boy from his concept of himself as a unique individual, a lone operator.

If you ain't scared," Alby said, "you ain't human. Act any different and I'd throw you off the Cliff because it'd mean you're a psycho.

After the initial shock, nothing was strange anymore. Anything could become normal.

There is no way to be truly great in this world. We are all impaled on the crook of conditioning.

In a totally sane society, madness is the only freedom.

Human beings today ... are surrounded by huge institutions we can never penetrate: the City [London's Wall Street], the banking system, political and advertising conglomerates, vast entertainment enterprises. They've made themselves user friendly, but they define the tastes to which we conform. They're rather subtle, subservient tyrants, but no less sinister for that.

Function? Why function? Who needs more functioning human beings? It's really quite astounding, if you ask me, the sheer quantity of normal in the world today. I think that's the real horror of modern life.

The things we never challenge are the things that never change

God is holy, and to see His holiness means to do it His way.

I was talking to one of my aunties at Christmas and she said she didn't think it was ever in my nature to go against the grain, that I was always a good boy. I think she was right - I did always want to be good.

So the verse means, "Do not let the age in which you live force you into its scheme of thinking and behaving.

The titled are powerful. Those around them are expected to yield, to withdraw their opposition, and to conform to their will—in the arena in which the title was won.