Quotes About Conformity

Obedience to the law, even unjust laws, had become one of the most egregious ways that ministers and their churches had become conformed to their culture.

Shoelaces are the first way society ties up the individual.

Clones fit in. Freaks stand out. Ask me which one I prefer.

Wild birds will kill exotic ones: the budgies and the lovebirds and the yellow canaries-- escaped from their cages and hoping to get a taste of the sky -- usually end up back on the ground, plucked raw by their more conformist cousins

I've always sort of wondered: If everyone else's opinion is what matters, then do you ever really have one of your own?

I personally subscribe to the belief that normal is just a setting on the dryer.

What if the puzzle of the world was a shape you didn't fit into? And the only way to survive was to mutilate yourself, carve away your corners, sand yourself down, modify yourself to fit? How come we haven't been able to change the puzzle instead?

What's the difference between spending your life trying to be invisible, or pretending to be the person you think everyone wants you to be? Either way, you're faking.

She stared at Peter, and she realized that in that one moment, when she hadn't been thinking, she knew exactly what he'd felt as he moved through the school with his backpack and his guns. Every kid in this school played a role: jock, brain, beauty, freak. All Peter had done was what they all secretly dreamed of: be someone, even for just nineteen minutes, who nobody else was allowed to judge.

Being a teenager isn't all that different from being part of someone else's story. There's always someone who thinks they know better than you do

a public persona that might be different from what we truly feel inside... everyone wonders if they are good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, no matter how old they are. It is an archetypical moral dilemma - Do you act like yourself and risk becoming an outcast?

I used to think I'd be just like them when I grew up, but I am not. And the thing is, somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting to be like them, anyway.

But it was like wearing a size five sneakers when your foot is a seven- you can get by for a few steps, and then you set down and pull off the shoes because it just plain much

Everyone wants their kid to grow up and go to Harvard or be a quarterback for the Patriots. No one ever looks at their baby and thinks, Oh, I hope my kid grows up and becomes a freak. I hope he gets to school every day and prays he won't catch anyone's attention. But you know what? Kids grow up like that every single day.

Although he too was heading to work, Shahid was glad he wasn't dragging himself off to some office job. Shahid's view: anybody who had to wear a suit to work died a little inside, every day.

We're told that to be fly, you gotta have a fly car, the rims on your wheels, the fly jewels, and that to work a regular job and make legal money is uncool.

Its like he gave me wings and said, Its illegal to fly.

I'm a geek? I'm a nerd? Rather be that than a fool. Look where being cool has gotten you...

Normal is just a setting on a washing machine.

If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up.

Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live.

People are born to be different. Yet most people spend their whole life trying to fit in and be the same as everyone else.

I've always been more drawn to being normal than being famous.

That moment when being independent is considered sinful.