Quotes About Conformity

It may be that most men do not care how they look, so long as they do not look ridiculous, and their conception of looking ridiculous is that they should look different from anybody else.

Herman Melville, "Bartleby"

The most damaging phrase in the language is: "It's always been done that way."

Na catinga ele às vezes cantava de galo, mas na rua encolhia-se.

What job do you want to do? And I see them all hanging up before me, like clothes on a rack, all the jobs, tinker, tailor, soldier, and you have to pick one and then you have to pretend for the rest of your life that that's what you are. So they aint no different really from accidents of birth. I didn't know that phrase then but I learnt it later. It's a good phrase...

It is almost impossible to get a novel printed in an English journal unless it is warranted to contain nothing at all to which anybody, however narrow, could possibly object, on any ground whatever, religious, political, social, moral or aesthetic. The romance that appeals to your average editor must say or hint at nothing at all which is not universally believed and received by everybody, everywhere in this realm of Britain.

Adults...struggle desperately with fiction, demanding constantly that it conform to the rules of everyday life. Adults foolishly demand to know how Superman can possibly fly, or how Batman can possibly run a multibillion-dollar business empire during the day and fight crime at night, when the answer is obvious even to the smallest child: because it's not real.

We tell our children they're trapped like rats on a doomed, bankrupt, gangster-haunted planet with dwindling resources, with nothing to look forward to but rising sea levels and imminent mass extinctions, then raise a disapproving eyebrow when, in response, they dress in black, cut themselves with razors, starve themselves, gorge themselves, or kill one another.

Guarda tu l'acqua: perché dicono che è saggia? Perché prende la forma del vaso ove la si versa." "Anche il vino, mi pare!

Sometimes I wonder if my stability has anything to do with me; maybe the real constant is the way I've been prepared. Maybe an infinite number of different people, put through the same process, would all emerge the same. Have all emerged the same. I don't know.

Emma smiled thinly. "The pills say wake up, and we wake up. We won't ever fall asleep at the wrong time again. But it's like being an animal in a factory farm, pushed along between the rails, going wherever you want us to go.

The scholarship of Christian academics isn't recognized as scholarship at all unless it conforms to the prevailing rules of scholarship in the academic disciplines. This forces Christian scholars to accommodate and blend in; even when their work is excellent, it isn't identified as Christian.

We have transformed the gospel into the benefits we receive from Jesus rather than the call to be conformed to the life of Jesus. We want abundance without obedience.

Some of us are just better at nodding along to the music we're supposed to be hearing. From 'Or She Dies'.

No one, certainly no teenager, was normal or felt they were. Everyone wore a kind of mask that kept people from really seeing what - or who - was inside

Il y avait des femmes, elles étaient là, je les connaissais, leurs familles les poussaient dans des institutions, elles on reçu des chocs électriques. Dans les années 50 si tu étais un homme tu pouvais être un rebelle, mais si tu étais une femme ta famille te bloquait. Il y eut certaines exceptions, je les connaissais, un jour quelqu'un écrira sur elles.

Zapatos que les apretaban y les sacaban ampollas y que tu padre impedía que dejaran de calzar porque sin zapatos ningún indio podía llegar a ser alguien. Los ingenieros, los abogados, los maestros no calzaban huaraches.

Un arte de burbuja, sn contaminación, sin riesgo, sin acercarnos a los márgenes de la sociedad, es un arte desdentado

I believe that writers, unless they consider themselves terribly exquisite, are at heart people who live by night, a little bit outside society, moving between delinquency and conformity.

I have not let myself be stultified by science, whose highest goal is to furnish a `waiting room', which it would be best to tear down.

Crowds always, and individuals as a rule, stand in need of ready-made opinions on all subjects. The popularity of these opinions is independent of the measure of truth or error they contain, and is solely regulated by their prestige.

Instead of preparing men for life French schools solely prepare them to occupy public functions, in which success can be attained without any necessity for self-direction or the exhibition of the least glimmer of personal initiative.

Khi con ng??i n?m trong ?ám ?ông, k? ngu d?t và nhà bác h?c ??u không có kh? n?ng nh?n xét.

The philosophic absurdity that often marks general beliefs has never been an obstacle to their triumph. Indeed the triumph of such beliefs would seem impossible unless on the condition that they offer some mysterious absurdity.