Quotes About Conformity

What turned ordinary men into screaming dirt at the top of their voices, what made her kind of people harden and say "nigger" when the word had never crossed their lips before?

She gave lip service to the world: she went through the motions of complying with the regulations governing the behavior of teenaged girls from good families; she developed a halfway interest in clothes, boys, hairdos, gossip, and female aspirations; but she was uneasy all the time she was away from the security of those who she knew loved her.

New York is saying to me right now: you, Jean Louise Finch, are not reacting according to our doctrines regarding your kind, therefore you do not exist.

The best minds in the country have told us who you are. You can't escape it, and we don't blame you for it, but we do ask you to conduct yourself within the rules that those who know have laid down for your behavior, and don't try to be anything else.

New York has all the answers. People go to the YMHA, the English-Speaking Union, Carnegie Hall, the New School for Social Research, and find all the answers. The city lives by slogans, isms, and fast sure answers. New York is saying to me right now: you, Jean Louise Finch, are not reacting according to our doctrines regarding your kind, therefore you do not exist.

You can't do that, Scout," Atticus said. "Sometimes it's better to bend the law a little in special cases. In your case, the law remains rigid. So to school you must go.

The Radley Place was inhabited by an unknown entity the mere description of whom was enough to make us behave for days on end; Mrs. Dubose was plain hell.

Don't you contradict me!' Mrs Dubose bawled. 'And you -' she pointed an arthritic finger at me - 'what are you doing in those overalls? You should be in a dress and camisole, young lady! You'll grow up waiting on tables if somebody doesn't change your ways - a Finch waiting on tables at the O.K. Cafe - hah!

The Radleys, welcome anywhere in town, kept to themselves, a predilection unforgivable in Maycomb.

When she dressed, she put on her Maycomb clothes: gray slacks, a black sleeveless blouse, white socks, and loafers. Although it was four hours away, she could hear her aunt's sniff of disapproval.

Prima di vivere con gli altri, bisogna che viva con me stesso: la coscienza è l'unica cosa che non debba conformarsi al volere della maggioranza.

They drew up her bosom to giddy heights, pinched in her waist, flared out her rear, and managed to suggest that Alexandra's had once been an hourglass figure.

I was bored, so I began a letter to Dill. Miss Caroline caught me writing and told me to tell my father to stop teaching me. "Besides," she said. "We don't write in the first grade, we print. You won't learn to write until you're in the third grade.

if it's cool you're after, then you're knock-knock-knocking on the wrong door. My maximum ambition is to make it to normal.

Being constantly with other people places a pressure of normality on me that I can't always bear. Here, alone, I can be the way I am. My version of ordinary.

Though he knew that he was young, at this moment he felt that his days were almost over. He could see the future and the rest of his life as clearly as if he had already lived it, because it would be unchanging and no different from the lives of all the others around him.

What makes us the most normal, said Reiko, is knowing that we're not normal.

Hey, what is it with you? Why are you so spaced out? You still haven't answered me. I probably still haven't completely adapted to the world, I said after giving it some thought. I don't know, I feel like this isn't the real world. The people, the scene: they just don't seem real to me. Midori rested an elbow on the bar and looked at me. There was something like that in a Jim Morrison song, I'm pretty sure. People are strange when you're a stranger.

Mediocrity's like a spot on a shirt—it never comes off.

Why do I act like this, agreeing when I really disagree, letting people force me to do things I don't want to do?

If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you

Perhaps most people in the world aren't trying to be free, Kafka. They just think they are. It's all an illusion. If they really were set free, most people would be in a real pickle. You'd better remember that. People actually prefer not being free?

If you want everything to be nice and straight all the time, then go live in a world made with a triungular ruler.

I happen to like the strange ones. People who look normal and leads normal lives – they're the ones you have to watch out for.