Quotes About Conformity

I was always the youngest person in class, skinny, scrawny, no good at sports. I asserted myself by being smart. But then I got to college and started to get C's and D's. That was fantastic. I no longer had to be the smartest person in the room.

What is it that you're not doing - in your work, in your life - because you feel you need permission? If someone had given you that permission as a youngster, what do you think you'd be doing now?

It was not a secret, then or now, that there is something vaguely un-American about forcing your child to be really good at classical music performance.

When I was a student, if you accidentally wrote a triad in a piece of yours, it was just sort of like you were breaking the law! You just couldn't do it. And that just meant you were a bad composer.

If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good.

Hordes of young girls never copied my hairdos or the way I talk or the way I dress. I have, therefore, never had to go through the stress of perpetuating an image that's often the equivalent of one particular song that forever freezes a precise moment of one's youth.

Peer pressure is a huge part of youth behavior, whether one grows up in Washington, D.C., or Cody, Wyo.

I, for one, hope that youth will again revolt and again demoralize the dead weight of conformity that now lies upon us.

Who I was was not acceptable to black L.A. youth: the way I spoke and my sense of humor. Everybody else had relaxers and pressed hair. I wore my hair in an Afro puff. Nappy. The way I dressed. It was all about name brands at the time in L.A. I had no idea. All those things, I failed miserably at.

In the beginning of my YouTube channel, I feel like I was doing what everyone else was doing, and I kind of felt very pressured to fit in with everyone.

I can't belong to groups. I've tried. I behave normally, but people don't look at me normally.

I think I've always had a certain amount of skepticism of this whole 'shut up and smile' theory. I haven't ever swallowed that pill so easily, although I tried.

Honestly, in the music business, it's all about being cool or being the newest thing or being the 'It' person, and I've tried really hard to be what is expected of me or what would be advantageous to my career, and I just reached the point where I said, 'No, I'm an emotional loser. I can't pretend to not care.'

I tried to fit in by ironing my hair and gelling down the front bits.

I was raised in a time where children were still seen and not heard basically, so I think a lot of us in my generation went the other way and just tried to be as much more liberal and open and we're still paying for it.

I always tried to fit in, so I was a cheerleader with the orange skin and white-blonde hair, and Hooters was part of that.

Society is a republic. When an individual tries to lift themselves above others, they are dragged down by the mass, either by ridicule or slander.

In a society that tries to standardize thinking, individuality is not highly prized.

We live in a society and a culture and an economic model that tries to make everything look right.

A lot of people out there pay good lip service to the idea of personal freedom... right up to the point that someone tries to do something that they don't personally approve of.

How can we choose to selectively follow what we find comfortable and attack anybody who tries to break free from the norms that we choose to set?

If a musician dares to get out of the box he's been put in, people get confused. They want people where they can find them! I am fortunate in some respects as I've always been known as someone who 'moves around' and tries different things. But generally, we are supposed to stay where we're put.

I went to public school for like, one day. I don't get it. Everybody tries to be exactly the same. I think being an outsider is a good thing.

Hollywood seduces a person who's used to making theater, art, and having success on their own terms and then tries to squish them into a box and, eventually, throws the box out.