Quotes About Conformity

When I was in fact a child, six and seven and eight years old, I was utterly baffled by the enthusiasm with which my cousin Brenda, a year and a half younger, accepted her mother's definition of her as someone who needed to go to bed at six-thirty and finish every bite of three vegetables, one of them yellow, with every meal.

There are important rules in life - like not parking on yellow lines or stealing from your neighbour. But some rules are made to be broken.

Yes, sir, no, sir, clock in, clock out. Why were you late? Why are you not in today? That's not how humans are supposed to live.

I do not want to be a robot, a cog in society who answers 'yes' because 'yes' is considered the appropriate answer. Neither do I want to be a protestor. I just want to seek out what lies underneath the veils of politeness and programming that I've been given as a person in this society.

While I was doing stand-up, I thought I knew for sure that success meant getting everyone to like me. So I became whoever I thought people wanted me to be. I'd say yes when I wanted to say no, and I even wore a few dresses.

I don't know anyone who was never a geek, really, when they look at their own lives. I think that from the outside looking in, you think that you weren't necessarily a tragic geek, but yes, you did lean in that direction.

Normal people with normal lives are not going to ask for sugar-free yogurt. They just take the stuff with sugar in it.

Eventually, my highbrow parents, who so hated the Eisenhower suburban culture of the 1950s that the only magazines they subscribed to were 'The Atlantic' and 'The New Yorker,' broke down and got 'Life' magazine.

I was pretty much a goody-two shoes at school - a bit boring, didn't get in trouble with teachers - it was classical Yorkshire: a lot of respect to your elders. Once I started playing cricket that sort of slipped away.

It wasn't cool that I didn't comb my hair and had books and wore glasses. It was never cool be a nerd and tomboy, and these days, it really is. And I'm like, 'You guys have no idea what I went through.' How many times my mother yelled at me to comb my hair.

If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences.

In all big cities the style of life is the same. Same endless array of restaurants; same big museums with the usual suspects; same anonymity, which can be thrilling when you're young but which I found got tiresome.

The message bombarding young adults from the leftist cultural elite is clear; you should think for yourself... by adopting my beliefs as your own.

Understand: as children and young adults, we are taught to conform to certain codes of behavior and ways of doing things. We learn that being different comes with a social price.

For years, young adults have adopted extremely liberal world views in their attempts to be different, ultimately failing to see the irony that they've all become the same.

I learned at a young age that my voice was not wanted or heard, so I went silent. I did what I was told and set goals based on what everyone else expected of me.

I think we all want to fit in at a young age.

We're really taught to be followers from a very young age - men lead and women follow.

I wanted to show a normal young girl whose only difference was that she behaved in the way a boy might, without any sense of guilt on a moral or sexual level.

There's so much judgment geared toward young girls. People just expect so much from girls. Even physically and aesthetically, people expect us to always look right, to have a certain etiquette - to talk a certain way and act a certain way - and to know certain things. It's all different expectations, but there are always expectations.

Young girls in particular aren't given a space to be messy and complicated and express themselves and experiment - they're told to be a little quieter and a little less than.

Women in figure skating, like in every other industry, are expected to conform to an unrealistic standard of beauty. Unhealthy habits are often encouraged to promote a thin frame, and young girls idealize a skewed definition of 'fit.'

I think a lot of young kids at school are very conscious of trying to keep credibility in case they kind of stand out in a crowd and get bullied by trying to stay cool and stuff. And my whole thing, all the way through school, was I was just a goof... I didn't care.

No worse fate can befall a young man or woman than becoming prematurely entrenched in prudence and negation.