Quotes About Conformity

Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.

What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There's no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told—and become upset if they are exposed to any different view.

Yet I have discovered that if all those around you believe some particular thing, you will soon be tempted to share in that belief...

We live in a world of frightful givens. It is given that you will behave like this, given that you will care about that. No one thinks about the givens. Isn't it amazing? In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.

they nevertheless suggested that evolutionary pressures were moving the human race toward ever-greater conformity.

What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There's no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told—and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare.

It was terribly important that such women should marry. The failure to marry--spinsterhood--implied a kind of dreadful crippling, for it was universally acknowledged that a woman's true position was that of administratrix, mainspring, guiding star of the home, and if she was unable to perform this function, she became a sort of pitiful social misfit, an oddity.

Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global

Los seres humanos nunca piensan por su cuenta, les resulta incómodo. En general, los miembros de nuestra especie se limitan a repetir lo que oyen y se desconciertan ante cualquier punto de vista.

El rasgo humano característico no es la conciencia sino el conformismo, y el resultado característico es la guerra religiosa. Otros animales luchan por el territorio o el alimento; los seres humanos, en cambio, son los únicos en el reino animal que luchan por sus creencias.

Do you imagine, Peter, that your Carpe Diem boots would look any less deluded to them than that guy's Tony Lamas do to you? There's a comeuppance for everyone, wherever you are, and the farther you go from your own fiefdom, the more ludicrous are your haircut, your clothes, your opinions, your life. Within easy walking distance of home are neighborhoods that might as well be in Saigon.

With them the individual counted for nothing. No one was irreplaceable, because they drew no distinction between one man and another... In this community there was harmony, but no love.

Others felt that their question had already been answered in the minds of other group members, and if they asked the question, it would be considered a dumb question, and they would be put down as being stupid or not going along with the group. Because people did not ask questions, people lost lives when the Titanic sank, when the Challenger crashed, when President Kennedy authorized a covert attack on the Bay of Pigs in Cuba.

It was not because they [Harris and Klebold] were deviants, but rather because they were overconformists to a particular normative construction of masculinity, a construction that defines violence as a legitimate response to a perceived humiliation.

So many problems occur when people fail to be obedient when they are supposed to be obedient, and fail to be creative when they are supposed to be creative. The

is creating problems for bureaucrats who suffer from malignant obedience.

All these texts tried in one way or another to explain the strange uniformity of the American businessman. He commuted to work in his immaculate gray suit from his neat suburban tract house. He kept his front lawn and his hair trimmed to lengths tacitly agreed upon by his peers. He avoided high culture, or anything else that smacked of elitism. He worked for some enormous gray corporation such as IBM or AT&T that was more of a home to him than his house in the suburbs.

People are not alarmed by the unusual so long as it is placed in an acceptable context.

We are full of anarchy. We take our clothes off because we shouldn't take our clothes off. And we behave worse in other countries.

Seeds have the power to preserve species, to enhance cultural as well as genetic diversity, to counter economic monopoly and to check the advance of conformity on all its many fronts.

Perhaps as the sway of tradition in our eating decisions weakens, habits we once took for granted are thrown up in the air, where they're more easily buffeted by a strong idea or a breeze of fashion.

Mum decided that I could sing a bit, so she put me in a choir, which I hated, and it was just a nightmare. I was a rebellious sort of choirboy.

What's wrong with Singapore is the idea that things need to be done in a certain way or not at all. Black or white. No room for alternative discussion.

Men are like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one.