Quotes About Conformity

Existence was really very simple when you did what you were told.

People distrust you if you don't play the same games they do, Sonny. It's the same after you grow up.

I'll be darned if I'd let any man tell me whether I could bob my hair or not. Why, I wouldn't go back to long hair now for anything. Morris says maybe I should take up smoking cigarettes now. Would you believe it, Cora? Women all over Oklahoma City are smoking cigarettes now. Isn't that disgraceful? What in God's name are we all coming to?

Germans did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away, that so much of their culture had been destroyed and replaced with a mindless barbarism, or that their life and work had become regimented to a degree never before

It does not matter what you think," he exclaims, "so long as you obey.

The National Socialist Movement will in the future ruthlessly prevent—if necessary by force—all meetings or lectures that are likely to distract the minds of our fellow countrymen."19

When he had first started at the center, he had liked to think that he was unexpectedly cool-looking for such a job. Now he knew that he surprised no one, that no one expected scientists to look like scientists anymore.

Soon they'll be saying you're a girl ate what was given her .

their tendency to dutifully follow a script written before they were born.

A wise man adapts himself to circumstances, as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it.

A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows the public opinion.

One dog barks at something, the rest bark at him.

Why did everyone become so obsessed with being 'perky', upbeat, and happy all the time? In our happiness-obsessive culture, even a lack of smile might cause people to think there is something wrong with you. What's worse is when we buy into it ourselves.

Beware the soul-sucking force of reasonableness

But isn't the use of a template or a checklist confining? Surely we're not arguing that a "color by numbers" approach will yield more creative work than a blank-canvas approach? Actually, yes, that's exactly what we're saying.

In this entire book, you might not find a single statement that is so rigorously supported by empirical research as this one: You are doing things because you see your peers do them.

With the online tracking sheet, Cachon was using the hotel-towel strategy. He was publicizing the group norm. Other people are getting their work done on time. Why won't you?

It's clear that we imitate the behaviors of others, whether consciously or not. We are especially keen to see what they're doing when the situation is unfamiliar or ambiguous. And change situations are, by definition, unfamiliar! So if you want to change things, you have to pay close attention to social signals, because they can either guarantee a change effort or doom it.

The status quo feels comfortable and steady because much of the choice has been squeezed out. You have your routines, your ways of doing things.

It's like you always have to put on a happy face, be the phony baloney, and I'm so not that. I never was that I'll never be that. That is part of the business that I don't like. Maybe that will always keep me an outsider, I don't know. But that's fine.

I learned your language and I learned your rules. I am more like you than me now.

Briana would hit the locker room, change into her New Goth Girl disguise/costume, and then try to find a seat at Elyssa Shapiro's table. It shouldn't be hard. Nobody much wanted to sit with Elyssa except her nose- and eyebrow-studded friend with the purple hair, Charlotte Edelman.

Most of these students are so conditioned to success that they become afraid to take risks. They have been taught from a young age by zealous parents, schools, and institutional authorities what constitutes failure and success. They are socialized to obey. They obsess over grades and seek to please professors, even if what professors teach is fatuous. The point is to get ahead, and getting ahead means deference to authority. Challenging authority is never a career advancer.

That's how it was supposed to be, and you really prefer things to be the way they are supposed to be. Funny, when you find things to be not to your liking you try to force them to be otherwise.