Quotes About Conformity

In school, I couldn't see any sense to reading, writing, and arithmetic. Sure, they kicked me out, but for trifles, like continual daydreaming and smoking, that wouldn't be grounds for expulsion nowadays.

When I was in high school in the '50s you were supposed to be an Elvis Presley, a James Dean, a Marlon Brando or a Kingston Trio type in a button-down shirt headed for the fraternities at Stanford or Cal.

Our troops should not conform to customs that represent the marginalization of people and are incongruent with our fundamental values.

Psychoanalysts believe that the only 'normal' people are those who cause no trouble either to themselves or anyone else.

What sometimes goes on in all sorts of Christian institutions is not formation of people in the character of Christ; it's teaching of outward conformity. You don't get in trouble for not having the character of Christ, but you do if you don't obey the laws.

I think you get in trouble if you make experimental big studio films.

People look at me like I should have been like Malcolm X or Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks. I should have seen life like that and stay out of trouble, and don't do this and don't do that. But it's hard to live up to some people's expectations.

No architect troubled to design houses that suited people who were to live in them, because that would have meant building a whole range of different houses. It was far cheaper and, above all, timesaving to make them identical.

Society honors its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.

You had to wear a hat to go to church. We weren't allowed to straighten our hair. We couldn't wear jewellery, nail polish, open backed shoes, skirts above the knee... trousers were forbidden because male apparel on a female was not godly.

The hit rap duo Kris Kross wore their trousers backwards, in the Nineties, and I wore my trousers backwards to a school disco. It led to some bullying.

I left the school sixth form after the first day because they wouldn't let me wear jeans and I couldn't go home and ask for money for trousers.

True guilt is guilt at the obligation one owes to oneself to be oneself. False guilt is guilt felt at not being what other people feel one ought to be or assume that one is.

When I was in school, I got there on the first day and everyone had long, blonde, straight hair, and I had short, dark, curly hair. I immediately felt I didn't fit in and started growing my hair. But I've learned that I'm only happy when I am truly me and feel comfortable and confident in myself.

You only trust those who are absolutely like yourself, those who have signed a pledge of allegiance to this particular identity.

People don't want other people to get high, because if you get high, you might see the falsity of the fabric of the society we live in.

If every day of your life you are told by authority figures that the Earth is flat, you will be scared of falling off the edge whether you want to be or not.

I think it killed my sister as the times she was living in were so conformist. This is a subject I really want to deal with. I want to start making films about female rage.

At a stage when young people want more than anything to be like everyone else, they find themselves the least alike. Everyone their age is growing and changing, but each at his or her own pace.

People who follow their religion to the letter of the law are just silly. I mean, I want to tell Hasidic Jews I promise you, God will not mind if you wear a nice cotton blend in the summer.

The idea of old was to conform yourself to a style of cooking, it was not to create a style of cooking. Now the chef is so much into 'I want to sign that dish and say I am the one who made that dish.

Sameness is what marketers want us to want.

I have to fit in. Wherever they want to use me, that's fine.

All really nice girls wonder when men don't try to kiss them. They know they shouldn't want them to and they know they must act insulted if they do, but just the same, they wish the men would try.