Quotes About Conformity

Being normal has some significant practical upsides.

That is why we must come back to our first principles. And the most basic of these is the fact that God is there and that he is objective to us. He is not there to conform to us; we must conform to him. He summons us from outside of ourselves to know him. We do not go inside of ourselves to find him. We are summoned to know him only on his terms. He is not known on our terms. This summons is heard in and through his Word. It is not heard through our intuitions.

If you don't develop mainstream tastes at any time of your life, it's not likely that you'll attract a mainstream audience.

If you are an adolescent, here is the trick to being neither quite a nerd nor quite a jock: be no one. It is easier than you think.

I Philo, educating yourself was something you had to do in spite if school, not because of it -- which is basically why so many of my high school peers are still there in Philo even now, selling one another insurance, drinking supermarket liquor, watching television, awaiting the formality of their first cardiac.

And it never even occurs to them their certainty that they are different is what makes them the same.

Que todas as pessoas são iguais na sua secreta e silenciosa crença de que no fundo são diferentes de todas as outras.

If you are an adolescent, here is the trick to being neither quite a nerd nor quite a jock: be no one.

These kids should be out drinking beer and seeing films and having panty raids and losing virginities and writhing to suggestive music, not making up long, sad, convoluted stories.

The more she wants to be accepted by the world, the more she's beaten back by her heightened perception of her own difference.

Credo di sembrare un tipo normale, forse persino simpatico, anche se mi hanno consigliato di apparire il più normale possibile, e di non provare nemmeno a fare quella che a me parrebbe un'espressione simpatica o un sorriso.

legs which not even orange Keds with purple-glitter-encrusted laces could make unserious. Shy

Forget so-called peer-pressure. It's more like peer-hunger. No? We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendent horror is loneliness, excluded engagement of the self. Once we've hit this age, we will now give or take anything, wear any mask, to fit, be part-of, not be Alone, we young.

We fill pre-existing forms and when we fill them we change them and are changed. —Frank Bidart, "Borges and I

The goose-step has always seemed to me to be an outlandish exhibition of the human being in his most undignified and stupid state.

n tempo sembravano puttane. Adesso somigliavano a studentesse universitarie. Volevano tutte sembrare studentesse. Perché non ci andavano davvero, all'università, allora? Non avrebbero avuto niente di diverso dalle altre. Nessuno le avrebbe mai notate. Cristo, che maniera assurda di stare al mondo.

Un tempo sembravano puttane. Adesso somigliavano a studentesse universitarie. Volevano tutte sembrare studentesse. Perché non ci andavano davvero, all'università, allora? Non avrebbero avuto niente di diverso dalle altre. Nessuno le avrebbe mai notate. Cristo, che maniera assurda di stare al mondo.

To beguile the time, look like the time. Bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue.

I would we were all of one mind, and one mind good.

For I am he am born to tame you, Kate; and bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate conformable as other household Kates.

I will not choose what many men desire, Because I will not jump with common spirits And rank me with the barbarous multitudes

Habit rules the unreflecting herd.

Tedn for we to be setting the world in step. Tedn sense, tedn natural, tedn right, tedn safe.

Names are important. They have to be neither too ordinary nor too queer, just a name, like a face, that'll go along with the crowd.