Quotes About Conformity

The first law of the multitude is conformity. Civilization is the mechanism of controlling and maintaining that multitude. The more civilized a nation, the more conformed its population, until that civilization's last age arrives, when multiplicity wages war with conformity. The former grows ever wilder, ever more dysfunctional in its extremities; whilst the latter seeks to increase its measure of control, until such efforts acquire diabolical tyranny.

Whatever evil you let ride becomes commonplace, eventually. Problem is, it's easier to get used to it than carve it out.

I grew up in a sanctified church. I had to wear skirts below the knee. I couldn't wear pants, open-toe or heeled shoes. We couldn't cut our hair.

If you have rules, you let creativity sleep.

McCarthyism is Americanism with its sleeves rolled.

We live in a homogenized world, where it's hard to get excited when everything is slick and professional. The interesting things are the dull things.

I was always dragging my poor mother to some school production, and sometimes shed be so embarrassed shed want to slide under the table, because, you know, all the other little girls had on their cute little pink tutus and here I come with a curtain on and a lampshade on top of my head!

The way I grew up, I had hippie parents, and we would run around the garden with no shoes on, very close to nature. So I never wore little princess dresses. I still have this feeling whenever I wear a very formal dress; I always have this slight fear that people will point their fingers at me and laugh: 'Vicky is trying to look like a lady.'

Growing up in a small town, in the Midwest, and Catholic - those are sort of three layers of repression.

I don't care what people call me, labels have the negative value of making smaller boundaries for people.

Back in the Eighties, I'd buy the biggest Benetton jumper I could find and would wear it long-sleeved, hanging off my shoulders, with a varsity jacket and a baseball cap on back to front with a quiff. I was the smallest boy in my class, and I looked like a reject from New Kids On The Block. Terrible.

As we got older, we grew comfortable in roles that met our parents' expectations. Nora was the smart one. Delia, the comedian. I was the pretty, obedient one. And Amy was the adventurous mischief-maker.

Obscenities... I think a lot of dumb people do it because they can't think of what they want to say and they're frustrated. A lot of smart people do it to pretend they aren't very smart - want to be just one of the boys.

Girls are almost always socialized to be perfect: 'Smile, do well in school, don't take too many risks.'

I am prone to reshape and refashion things to try and please as many people as I can, to get as many nods or smiles out of as many people as possible.

I grew up in a no man's land. My mother was ultra liberated and she thought I was backward because I didn't smoke or do drugs, yet for the society, I was very modern. Mothers would keep their daughters away from me for fear they would get corrupted.

At school, everyone smoked cigarettes. I was the rebel who didn't want to. I have never needed anything like that to have a good time, and that also means my experiences are always very real.

For a few months when I was about 17, I smoked a small cigar because I thought it looked cool and it would get me the girls. It didn't.

The way I was raised, you get a new pair of sneakers when the old one gets messed up. But when I got to high school, I started dating girls and trying to fit in, and I realized everybody was collecting Jordans. When I would get my paychecks, I wouldn't even take money. I would just trade them for sneakers.

'Boom Bang a Bang' was a huge part of me, maybe a part that I didn't relish, and there might be psychological reasons for that - I was a child being made to do things I didn't want to do. I was perhaps an elitist, a bit of a snob.

The reason that we're seeing so many people flee the Left - I like to call them liberal refugees, like myself - is because they do not allow you to think freely. If you agree with them 95 percent and disagree on 5 percent, you are essentially excommunicated. You're not allowed to be a liberal anymore. You're not allowed to be a Democrat anymore.

So many people are concerned with being the perfect 'something.' Whether it's the perfect singer, the perfect sexy girl, or the perfect feminist. I don't want to be the perfect anything.

Part of the public horror of sexual irregularity so-called is due to the fact that everyone knows himself essentially guilty.

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. "Preservation through Dissemination" is Hudson's credo, a principle he raises (need I mention it?) high above profit: Hudson calls on his subscribers to save and exchange seeds with him and one another;