Quotes About Conformity

Because this report considered "commitment to multicultural social studies education" to be crucial, it called for "extensive staff development" which would "address attitudes"—i.e., indoctrination—and which would extend even to the schools' clerical staffs and bus drivers.7 In short, the call for cultural "diversity" is a call for ideological conformity.

Es que no puede haber una forma de manifestarlo sin parecer "beodo o trastornado"? La civilización es una estupidez. ¿Para qué se nos ha dado un cuerpo, si hemos de mantenerlo encerrado en un estuche como si fuera algún valioso Stradivarius?

Criticism is really nothing but one person's opinion raised to the level of "the way it is." It's designed to control, either through making the criticized person conform, or by making them feel guilty or ashamed.

Once you start living according to other people's rules, going along with what other people think, your soul shrivels and dies.

In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary.

My story is a perfect example of how, early in our lives, we follow the rules set down by those who come before us—often without questioning why these rules are in place. However, when we observe our circumstances, we may find that the rules keep the current ruler in power—not for the good of the whole, but for the good of the one or the few.

Many of us commit the error of following the rules of our cultural community, which prevents us from stepping out of our caves and sharing our gifts in the world.

The rules say you have to be tall and thin and blonde and beautiful and not very smart and never want anything that you can't get from a man. So why the hell would I want to follow the rules?

Individuality is the enemy of this mass society. Individuality speaks for the individual and makes him a significant factor. Art is individuality.

My feeling is that sanity is actually a pretence, a way we learn to behave. We keep this pretence up because we don't want to be rejected by other people—and being classified insane is to be shut out of the group in a very complete way.

Laughter is a whip that keeps us in line. It's horrible to be laughed at against your will. Either you suppress unwelcome laughter or you start controlling it.

Our tremendous drive for social acceptance and toward conformity in our time is causing us to train our children to be a generation of young liars who do not even realise they are lying. We train our children to be subtly dishonest almost from the crib. "Shh... don't cry in front of all these people.

All the contortions we go through just not to be ourselves for a few hours.

National Service] changes guys. I saw my older cousins, older friends who'd been through it. They'd come out different men, basically. Left right left right. That drill. It's brainwashing. You can do it in your goddamn sleep. Sometimes these guys did. Their whole mind changed, and their sense of what they were, what level they inhabited. […] A lot of steam seemed to have been taken out of them.

The hardest thing about being in this business is just being able to be yourself. People act like there's this one set of rules to follow to be a pop star and I think, 'Well, you say I'm a pop star, so maybe that's not true.'

As far as he knew, no one in his family had turned out normal yet and he didn't see why he should be the first.

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 you don't watch it people will force you one way or the other, into doing what they think you should do, or into just being mule-stubborn and doing the opposite out of spite.

That ain't me, that ain't my face. It wasn't even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn't even really me them; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted.

What do you think you are, for Chrissake, crazy or somethin'? Well you're not! You're not! You're no crazier than the average asshole out walkin' around on the streets and that's it.

Public education puts relentless pressure on its students to conform.

Uno de los enemigos de la creatividad y la innovación, en particular en relación con nuestro propio crecimiento, es el sentido común. El dramaturgo Bertolt Brecht dijo que cuando algo nos parece lo más evidente del mundo no hacemos ningún esfuerzo por entenderlo.

The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.

Groupthink can diminish the group as a whole.