Quotes About Conformity

The nail that sticks out farthest gets hammered the hardest.

No reason makes it right To shun accepted ways from stubborn spite; And we may better join the foolish crowd Than cling to wisdom, lonely though unbowed.

Habit rules the unreflecting herd.

Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.

What people want, mainly, is to be told by some plausible authority that what they are already doing is right. I don't know know of a quicker way to become unpopular than to disagree.

And yet we check and chide The airy angels as they float about us, With rules of so-called wisdom, till they grow The same tame slaves to custom and the world.

Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority.

Perhaps the logical conclusion of everyone looking the same is everyone thinking the same.

It is undoubtedly easier to believe in absolutes, follow blindly, mouth received wisdom. But that is self-betrayal.

give a mental assent to the customs of their forefathers

Now we are not much more moral than the animals. We are only held down by the whips of society. If society said today, "I will not punish you if you steal," we should just make a rush for each other's property. It is the policeman that makes us moral. It is social opinion that makes us moral, and really we are little better than animals. We understand how much this is so in the secret of our own hearts. So let us not be hypocrites.

And so, as in every other thing, we are always trying to ignore the standard of another, trying to bind the whole world to our standard.

They Laugh at me because I am different, I laugh at them because they all are the same.

If you're not a rebel by the age of twenty, you've got no heart, but if you haven't turned establishment by thirty, you've got no brains.

In Europe where human relations like clothes are supposed to last, one's got to be wearable. In France one has to be interesting, in Italy pleasant, in England one has to fit.

Life is, if anything, the art of combination. Of discrimination. Of freely picking one's own personal pattern out of a hundred choices. Not letting it be picked for you—either by the Establishment, or by the Rebels. Conformity of Hip is no better than Conformity of Square.

When a man's position in life depends upon his having a certain opinion, that's the opinion he will have.

If you choose to represent the various parts in life by holes upon a table, of different shapes—some circular, some triangular, some square, some oblong—and the persons acting these parts by bits of wood of similar shapes, we shall generally find that the triangular person has got into the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square person has squeezed himself into the round hole.

It's a lot more comfortable to live in a world where the rules still apply.

We do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in but its fitting in is a test of its value -- a test, it is true, which can only be slowly and cautiously applied, for we are none of us infallible judges of conformity.

The Hell of Regret He who wins the race cannot run with the pack. And once you get out you can't come back, because caged lions don't mate with free ones! If ever you are going to win, you must forsake the social construct of the cage and all the cage dwellers.

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will (Romans 12:2 NIV).

Instincts under pressure crush the carbon of conformity and create diamonds. Each new season of life offers to train us for the next season if we pay attention and adapt.

Instincts under pressure crush the carbon of conformity and create diamonds.