Quotes About Conformity

When we pray in Jesus' name, we are appealing to the Holy Spirit to conform our prayers to Christ's purposes.

The common person fears to think beyond the common.

The supreme lesson of any education should be to think for yourself and to be yourself; absent this attainment, education creates dangerous, stupefying conformity.

I always try to suit my clothes to my company. It is the only way to be inconspicuous.

Billy made no demur. But, indeed, any demur would have been as idle as the protest of a goldfinch popped into a cage.

Cosmos is the world turned away from God, rebellious and hostile toward him (cf. Rom. 3:16, 19; 2 Cor. 5:19), depraved mankind that is headed for judgment (Rom. 3: 6; 1 Cor. 11: 32). As such believers are redeemed from the present evil aeon (Gal. 1: 4), the cosmos has been crucified for them and they for the cosmos (Gal. 6: 14), they are considered as no longer living in the cosmos (Col. 2: 20), and they must not let themselves be conformed to this aeon (Rom. 12: 2).

Conformity is evil when it distorts, flattens, and erases fruitful ways, strong ideas, natural identities; it is evil when it is a steamroller. But a man cannot escape being part of a milieu--and a recognizable part--unless he flees naked to a cave, never to return.

Tocqueville long ago marked as the great weakness of a democracy in his unforgettable phrase, "the tyranny of the majority." The pressure to emulate neighbors, the urge to conform to popular views and manners, the deep fear of being different

Parlor talk seems to me on much more promising ground worrying over conformity than gnawing the bones of Freud.

If you're not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one.

Ah! - dice il romantico, e indossa l'abito di un sistema estraneo di valori: - Ah! Ora sono dei vostri e non sono più solo. Ah! - dice l'esteta, e indossa lo stesso abito: - io resto solo, ma questo è un bell'abito! - l'esteta nella sfera del romanticismo rappresenta il principio del male.

In the Seventeenth Century a man feared to go to Mass lest the Judges should punish him. To-day a man fears to speak in favor of some social theory which he holds to be just and true lest his master should punish him.

Some Generations ago a man challenged to tell you why he forswore his manhood in any particular regard would have answered you that it was because he feared punishment at the hands of the law; to-day he will tell you that it is because he fears unemployment... In the Seventeenth Century a man feared to go to Mass lest the Judges should punish him. To-day a man fears to speak in favor of some social theory which he holds to be just and true lest his master should punish him.

But human beings are not machines, and however powerful the pressure to conform, they sometimes are so moved by what they see as injustice that they dare to declare their independence. In that historical possibility lies hope.

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience.

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders and millions have been killed because of this obedience. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves and the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem.

No doubt the odds are against dissenters in any nation's judicial system. But human beings are not machines, and however powerful the pressure to conform, they sometimes are so moved by what they see as injustice that they dare to declare their independence. In that historical possibility lies hope.

denounced in a summary trial, the name called out, giving a reason why they no longer fitted into the national vision, before their books were committed to the fire. All this was being broadcast by radio around the nation.

Coming of age in a fascist police state will not be a barrel of fun for anybody, much less for people like me, who are not inclined to suffer Nazis gladly and feel only contempt for the cowardly flag-suckers who would gladly give up their outdated freedom to live for the mess of pottage they have been conned into believing will be freedom from fear.

All around us were people I had spent ten years avoiding--shapeless women in wool bathing suits, dull-eyed men with hairless legs and self-conscious laughs, all Americans, all fearsomely alike. These people should be kept at home, I thought; lock them in the basement of some goddamn Elks Club and keep them pacified with erotic movies; if they want a vacation, show them a foreign art film; and if they still aren't satisfied, send them into the wilderness and run them with vicious dogs.

The difference between the student radicals and the Hell's Angels is that the students are rebelling against the past, while the Angels are fighting the future. Their only common ground is their disdain for the present, or the status quo.

To put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES. But don't misunderstand me. I don't mean that we can't BE firemen, bankers, or doctors—but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal.

Maybe he's up to something, maybe he'Å› not really crazy after all. Perhaps he just got fed up acting normal and decided to act crazy instead, and they locked him up because he went too far.

Perhaps he just got fed up acting normal and decided to act crazy instead, and they locked him up because he went too far.