Quotes About Conformity

That's what she was, Joanna felt suddenly. That's what they all were, all the Stepford wives: actresses in commercials, pleased with detergents and floor wax, with cleansers, shampoos, and deodorants. Pretty actresses, big in the bosom but small in the talent, playing housewives unconvincingly, too nicey-nice to be real.

They never stop, these Stepford wives. They something something all their lives. Work like robots. Yes, that would fit. They work like robots all their lives.

Once again, both Chris and I were manipulated like small puppets in our world of adults. We didn't like it, and we suffered, but the tall ones around us said that we would soon get over our sadness, that we would "adapt" in a matter of weeks.

There are bars with women wearing shirts with stiff necks and ties and they are terribly proud to be perverts, as if that weren't something nobody can do anything about.

Modernity consists in a revolt against the prevailing style, an unyielding rage against the official order.

Society now hovers over mankind like a crushing weight, sometimes it seems with a willful malevolence.

Was the process of institutionalization both so powerful and subtle, that I could be aware of it and yet be unable to resist?

To be one's self, and unafraid whether right or wrong, is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity.

Custom is second nature. Be accustomed to a bald head, sufficiently accustomed, and hair on it would seem monstrous.

To have a home, a family, a property or a public function, to have a definite means of livelihood and to be a useful cog in the social machine, all these things seem necessary, even indispensable, to the vast majority of men, including intellectuals, and including even those who think of themselves as wholly liberated. And yet such things are only a different form of slavery that comes of contact with others, especially regulated and continued contact.

Orthodoxy is my Doxy, Heterodoxy is the other fellow's Doxy.

?u aç?k ki, bugün s?ra d??? olmayan ki?ilerin dünyas?nda ya??yoruz, en basit bireysellikleri bile reddedilen ki?ilerin dünyas?nda, öyle ki, insanlar önceden belirlenmi? davran??lar?n soyut bir toplam?na dönü?mü? durumdalar. bugün sorun, insan?n benli?inin bir bölümünü yitirmesi de?il art?k, tümünü yitirmesi, hiç var olmamas?d?r.

One gets used to persisting in one's habits, to finding oneself isolated for good reasons, to putting up with the discomfort that this causes, to finding the right way to hold on to positions which are not shared by the majority.

If being a man is something that required a person to tick off a bunch of boxes, not many people would make it through.

Una vez que un hombre o una mujer ha aceptado la necesidad de la escuela, es fácil presa de otras instituciones

Crescere nella condizione di bambino significa essere condannati ad un conflitto disumano tra la propria coscienza di sé e il ruolo imposto da una società che sta attraversando la propria età scolare.

School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.

Schools themselves pervert the natural inclination to grow and learn into the demand for instruction.

We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in colour and fire, but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types.

process of "automatic osmosis" — the seeping of predigested thoughts along the Party line into all subordinate minds, disciplined to accept. The members become ideological sleepwalkers, drugged into complete obedience by an unconscious discipline.

I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that's my one fear: that everything has happened nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again... the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul.

Avoid the tyranny of the reasonable voice...it will guarantee a complacency of never trying anything adventurous...

The conformist is not born. He is made. I believe the brainwashing process begins in the schools and colleges.

It shouldn't be very difficult for anyone to resist the temptation to force himself into the pattern of the structured man. One needs only to remember that a groove may be safe--but that, as one wears away at it, the groove becomes first a rut and finally a grave.