Quotes About Conformity

I couldn't act like a normal person again when she now knows me as a crazy person, because that would imply I have a choice. That I can choose to be crazy or normal. And if I have a choice, then that would imply that I'm not really crazy at all, and I should just stop it and get on with my life.

How quickly people adapted to strange rules and regulations.

Jane had tried that with Mothers Group and failed. She just couldn't relate to those bright, chatty women and their bubbly conversations about husbands who weren't "stepping up" and renovations that weren't finished before the baby was born and that hilarious time they were so busy and tired they left the house without putting on any makeup! (Jane, who was wearing no makeup at the time, and never wore makeup, had kept her face blank and benign, while she inwardly shouted: What the fuck?)

Everyone wanted to be rich and beautiful, but the truly rich and beautiful had to pretend they were just the same as everyone else. Oh, it was a funny old world.

The costs of not being integrated correctly (and I am using corrections here deliberately) are the veiled threats and often realities of institutionalization or returning to segregated congregate living (for those who were deinstitutionalized). There is always the shadow of the adverse consequences if one does not conform or comply—what I called elsewhere the institution yet to come.46 The specter of incarceration is inherent, as a promise or threat, in mechanisms of liberal inclusion.

People don't really want to know anything about you. They just want you to fit into their little predetermined slots. They decide what you are in the first two seconds, and they only get nervous or upset if you don't live up to their snap judgments.

People don't really want to know anything about you. They just want to put you into their little preordained slots. They decide what you are in the first two seconds, and they only get nervous or upset if you don't live up to their snap judgements. That's the only way the normal world's like the Real – it all depends on who people think you are. Figure that out, play to what they expect, and it's clear sailing.

Why with our emphasis on the individual are we still so blinded by the urge to conform?

Who are we and where are we going? Why are we, with all our "progress", so limited in understanding & sympathy & the ability to give each other real freedom? Why with our emphasis on the individual are we still so blinded by the urge to conform?

She claimed that conformity created maladjustment and tradition could turn psychopathic.

Who are we and were are we going? Why are we, with all our "progress" so limited in understanding and sympathy and the ability to give each other real freedom? Why with our emphasis on the individual are we still so blinded by the urge to conform?

And all the while I am aware of a larger despair, as if Helen & I are vessels for the despair of all women and many men too. Who are we and where are we going? Why are we, with all our 'progress,' so limited in understanding & sympathy & the ability to give each other real freedom? Why with our emphasis on the individual are we still so blinded by the urge to conform?

conformity created maladjustment and tradition could turn psychopathic. Her last sentences urged acceptance of cultural relativism and tolerance of differences.

If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?

If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?

Sometimes there is more to a person's need for white picket fences than safety, just as sometimes there is more to a person's rebellion than the need to lash out against rules.

doesn't mean to say we are always going to be crazy either. Simply that we are back on that line, jostling for position with everyone else who claims to be normal.

We're so quick to cut away pieces of ourselves to suit a particular relationship, a job, a circle of friends, incessantly editing who we are until we fit in.

When you're invisible, no one can see that you're different.

That dichotomy between who she was and who she thought she should be was what really killed her.

Everything is the way it is because we've all agreed that's the way it is.

Everybody wants me to be what they want me to be but I'm not happy when I try to fake it.

Beware of what "everybody says".

Orderliness readily slides to conformity over time.