Quotes About Conformity

You're afraid to see where it's leading. I'm not. I'll tell you. The world of the future. The world I want. A world of obedience and of unity. A world where the thought of each man will not be his own, but an attempt to guess the thought in the brain of his neighbor who'll have no thought of his own but an attempt to guess the thought of the next neighbor who'll have no thought—and so on, Peter, around the globe.

By not wearing it," he continued, "you also make things harder for other Muslim women. They see you not wearing it and it plants doubt in their mind…they think to themselves, 'If others don't wear it, why should I?'

One cancels the other, and yet without one, the other is incomplete. In the first photograph, standing there in our black robes and scarves, we are as we had been shaped by someone else's dreams. In the second, we appear as we imagined ourselves. In neither could we feel completely at home.

Adesso che non potevo più pensare a me come a un'insegnante, una scrittrice, che non potevo più indossare quello che volevo, né camminare per strada al mio passo, gridare se mi andava di farlo o dare una pacca sulla spalla a un collega maschio, adesso che tutto ciò era diventato illegale, mi sentivo evanescente, artificiale, un personaggio immaginario scaturito dalla matita di un disegnatore che una gomma qualsiasi sarebbe bastata a cancellare

Whoever we were—and it was not really important what religion we belonged to, whether we wished to wear the veil or not, whether we observed certain religious norms or not—we had become the figment of someone else's dreams.

The class's favorite book was Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading. In this novel, Nabokov differentiates Cincinnatus C., his imaginative and lonely hero, from those around him through his originality in a society where uniformity is not only the norm but also the law.

Several months into the class, my girls and I discovered that almost every one of us had had at least one nightmare in some form or another in which we either had forgotten to wear our veil or had not worn it, and always in these dreams the dreamer was running, running away.

standing there in our black robes and scarves, we are as we had been shaped by someone else's dreams. In the second, we appear as we imagined ourselves. In neither could we feel completely at home.

Il n'y a aucune raison que la politique soit nécessairement conforme à l'image que s'en font les gens. Ca peut être autre chose.

the pale pinks and greens of the sixties tract houses visible above them. One house, defiant heliotrope, stood out among them like a biker at a CPA convention.

Isn't it awfully sad to thing that's all history amounts to, just following the next stupid fashion?

we consume. I think that's just how we have to be." "Of course you think that. When everybody around you thinks the same way, you can't even see what you're believing in.

Some people say religion is finding yourself, and some people say it's losing yourself in a crowd.

But where is the place for girls in that Kingdom? The rules don't quite apply to us, nor protect us either. What do a girl's bravery and righteousness count for, unless she is also pretty? Just try being the smartest and most Christian seventh-grade girl in Bethlehem, Georgia. Your classmates will smirk and call you a square. Call you worse, if you're Adah.

When everybody around you thinks the same way, you can't even see what you're believing in.

Blanche stared at Emmeline's door for a few moments, bristling with the desire to knock and trying to conquer her natural inclination to defy the voice of authority. It was one of the reasons she had not lasted in the waitressing, telephone sales, clerking, and typing jobs she'd tried over the years.

Your personality. You know, most people are like sheep. Nice, harmless creatures who want nothing more than to be left alone so they can graze. But then of course there are wolves. Who want nothing more than to eat the sheep.

Most kids don't give a hoot in hell for brains; they go a penny a pound, and the kid with the high I.Q. who can't play baseball or at least come in third in the local circle jerk is everybody's fifth wheel.

The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement." —Aristotle, from The Nicomachean Ethics

They want other people to be the way they want them to be. They often want to clone them, and they surround themselves with "yes" people—people who won't challenge them, people who are weaker than they.

Germans followed far too easily. Only a few dared to lead with all of the others, like ants in the mound, blindly fell into line.

Yet ignorance seemed the greatness weakness of conformity. A select few made all the decisions, and everyone else followed, regardless that those decisions could be wrong.

I can think of hardly anything that will kill your joy and freedom more than wearing a mask geared to get others to accept you because you are acting like them.

Personality freezes us in a safe and secure pattern of being that we probably finished making up somewhere in junior high school. Most of our "permanent" personality was shaped from fear: fear of embarrassment, fear of losing face, fear of appearing uncool.