Quotes About Conformity

I was raised as a tomboy with boys, and I never really feel like myself when I am really dolled up at premieres and showbiz events.

I was very much a tomboy. I just couldn't do the pink ballet tutus.

I toned down my accent at school; otherwise, people would pick on me.

It's so funny to think about it now, but I kind of toned everything down about myself for 'Idol.' When it came down to song choices, or hair choices, or stuff like that, producers had the final say. I never got to sing, for instance, a female artist's song.

Female athletes are supposed to be toned down. You're always supposed to talk about the team and never stand out.

I was a really bad teenager and I got my tongue pierced. I don't even remember where I did it, but it was under very surreptitious circumstances.

I've certainly had to bite my tongue on occasion and live to fight another day, so to speak, on certain things. But when you're new and fresh, you come out and think, 'I don't want to screw my chance up, so I'll go along with what everybody else does.'

For a long time, my dad was always on me about cutting my hair. 'Get a haircut. Gel your hair. You've got to do something to get your hair to stay down. It's too big; get it down! It's too crazy.'

I think a lot of people study the rules too much and then don't know how to be creative.

Everyone is so into labeling themselves. I don't really put too much into that.

Everything in Formula 1 has been sterilised now, the whole thing is controlled too much.

All around me, I saw people who were taught by their parents, as I was, to just toe the line, not ruffle the feathers, not rock the boat too much and just put your head down, do your work and that's it. And I think that as a community, we're reaching the limitations of that kind of thinking.

Once I reported for a dramatic lesson. The coach looked at me and said, 'Amanda, can't you part your hair some other way? It makes you look too much like someone else on the lot.' I rushed home and parted my hair in the middle and have ever since. I even wore it tied up in a big bun in back.

If someone puts too much pressure on me, I will automatically rebel.

I never smoked. I never drank and I never took drugs. The funny thing is, nothing is more boring, people like this. For me, it's OK. But most of my friends, at least they smoke and drink.

When I first lived in a model apartment... It was two bunk beds to a room, and the bathroom was constantly in use. I was bringing in Lucky Charms cereal, and one day an agent put a stop to that. She said, 'You're making all the girls fat.' They took it off our grocery order. That was the most dramatic thing that happened.

We call the rangers 'the tool.' They're just kind of a tool of the government machine. They don't use their own mind.

We're living at this funny time, where we're all urged to express ourselves as unique individuals, but on the other hand, we share a limited set of tools for doing that. It's easy to feel like nothing more than the sum of your consumer choices.

I thought I needed to go to one of the top five schools in the nation and never even thought 'What's important to me?' Instead of figuring out what was important, which was obviously being near home, I kind of just went with what everyone thought I should do.

I was a suburban kid who fancied myself somehow intellectual. I was into punk rock but I couldn't get into the subcultural signifiers of dyed hair, safety pins and torn denim. Being a punk seemed like a new set of rules that I wasn't interested in having to follow.

Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas.

I thought I was a hippie, bro. I wore Birkenstocks every day. I went to a Christian high school, so I was pretty funky. The teachers didn't give me a hard time, though, even though I was totally way out of line in terms of my dress code.

The only way to rebel against my mother was to be totally normal.

If you decide to just go with the flow, you'll end up where the flow goes, which is usually downhill, often leading to a big pile of sludge and a life of unhappiness. You'll end up doing what everyone else is doing.