Quotes About Conformity

People who are forever breaking the rules, trying other roads, attempting to create their own system of values and truth from scratch, spend most of their time calling up someone to get them out of trouble and help repair the damage, and then ask the silly question "What went wrong?" As H. H. Farmer said, "If you go against the grain of the universe you get splinters.

I mean, what is 'normal' anyway? It's just a societal construct that we all choose to live under to avoid social friction.

The habit of religion is oppressive, an easy way out of thought.

As far as innovation goes, I can tell you that Korean students are reluctant to step out of line. If I ask questions, nobody raises their hands - not because they don't know the answers, but because they don't want to step out of line.

If you rely completely on protocol, you can become a robot.

I learned this through Iron Man - it really doesn't matter what I think about who he is because everybody has such a huge idea about what they think the guy is. You can't just rely on your instincts and your imagination, you have to match up with what the expectations are from the people.

There came a time when these two incompatible notions of who I was, well, something had to give. Either that 'something' is where you acquiesce to the world around you and you conform, or you sort of defiantly break whatever remaining bonds connect you to that world and create for yourself a different set of values.

It is remarkable how easily children and grown-ups adapt to living in a dictatorship organised by lunatics.

I remember seeing 'Dead Poet's Society,' and it made it appealing in a way that I actually went to prep school.

What is the obsession with not repeating clothes or making appearances that have been similar to the one's we've made in the past? Why is the fashion police so intense? What do they expect from us? What kind of pressure is this?

Form ossifies into genre through repetition.

Each Chinese person is a kind of replica of the next one and that is a very frightening thing.

Activities that seem to represent choices are often inert reproductions of accepted practice.

I think that was my biggest fear - censoring myself and putting myself into a cookie cutter to be representative. But I think what I realised is we don't need that.

What I've noticed about Hollywood is, if you go out there shouting about who you are, they will love you for it. But if you go out not knowing what it is that you're representing, and you are just a canvas, they will make you into the thing they need you to be.

Why can't a woman be a little cooler in her emotions and a little quieter and more repressed without it being a huge thing? I've actually always quite enjoyed that, to tell you the truth.

I've never really subscribed to the theory that repression breeds rebellion. I don't think that's really true.

We all live under some repression; we have to, it's part of the deal.

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

If Marilyn Manson would write a song that says, 'Do your damn homework,' it would make the world a better place, and it wouldn't hurt him at all. And if he doesn't like it, to hell with him. He can come fight us - by the bicycle racks.

Both Left and Right take pleasure in mildly persecuting those who fail to meet their civic ideals.

If you watch 'American Idol,' and you close your eyes, you don't know who's singing because they all sound exactly alike.

We're constantly being fed images and being told what to like and what is good, and for the most part, I think people enjoy living that way. It takes a lot of the thinking out of it.

People are not as imaginative as they think they are.