Quotes About Conformity

For the writer under Actually Existing Socialism describing sex is a simple matter: he simply does not do it (the describing, I mean, not the sex).

The line between good and evil is permeable and almost anyone can be induced to cross it when pressured by situational forces.

I have been primarily interested in how and why ordinary people do unusual things, things that seem alien to their natures. Why do good people sometimes act evil? Why do smart people sometimes do dumb or irrational things?

Every evil starts with 15 volts.

All evil begins with fifteen volts.

I also know how much of yourself you have to leave behind in order to look like everyone else.

Today, I'd like to slap this seventeen-years old kid, not because of the grades but because of his incessant need to please those who would judge him

If I shut up, it's just to avoid being confronted by violence. Is it cowardice? Perhaps. I prefer to see it as a kind of necessary self-protection. But I will never change. I will never think: It's bad, or It would be better to be like everyone else, or I will lie to them so that they'll accept me. Never. I stick to who I am. In silence, of course, but it's a proud, stubborn silence.

To step off the reservation to question the rules of the larger society is to take a great risk, but perhaps also to find a great opportunity. We will never know how great the opportunity was if we are afraid to take the risk.

il subissait la dictature de l'apparence.

Every time I have visited the U.S., I have been asked to let loose my hair and remove the hair pins. Each time, I have put up a defiant face.

I always felt slightly grubbier than most American people. I was never quite as groomed as everyone else, never quite as fit as anyone else. I didn't have my protein shake and my vitamins.

What it means to look like a woman or man changes regionally - from mannerisms to clothes to posture to makeup to even your vocals - so I just observe, and I replicate.

I'm not going to all of a sudden start wearing a snazzy suit and putting a scarf around my neck, which seemed to be vogue for about 20 minutes at one point.

Don't ever take a dramatic lesson. They will try to put your voice in a dinner jacket, and people like their hominy and grits in everyday clothes.

People are so scared to really voice who they are. They want to be politically correct. Just scared to see what other people's perceptions are.

Folks will always, always, always go back to the comfortable status quo, with its silent voices and lack of conflict, if you give them the chance.

There are times when the voice of repining is completely drowned out by various louder voices: the voice of government, the voice of taste, the voice of celebrity, the voice of the real world, the voice of fear and force, the voice of gossip.

The tattooed nation will live to regret this voluntary disfigurement.

I've come to realize that an unencumbered U.S. senator is a profound threat to the whole system. It's somebody that they can't put in a box and say, 'Oh, well, we know how this guy is going to vote.'

And I always voted at my party's call, and I never thought of thinking for myself at all.

It was always difficult to go to the mall because I wanted to dress like everybody else and go to Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister, but I knew there wasn't much of a selection for me.

Self-censorship has become a part of me. I think because we live in a place where community is very important, family is very important, you feel the weight of how people look at you. Even though I might seem very modern and very liberated, I still have a lot of issues to deal with. I'm scared of how people look at me.

I take a lot of flak from the counter-establishment for selling out.