Quotes About Conformity

We are entirely enclosed in our time and institutions, we can fight against it only with it, indirectly, from the inside.

One cannot make a direct ontology. My 'indirect' method (being in the beings) is alone conformed with being--'negative philosophy' like 'negative theology.

The goal of discipleship—giving someone the assistance needed to be conformed into the character image of Christ—will never change, but the methodology will and must.

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a whole flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. If man were not a gregarious animal, the world might have achieved, by this time, some real progress towards civilisation. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him loose among his fellows, and he is lost—he becomes just an unit in unreason.

This is how all social, ideological, or religious movements police their members-by making clear that agreement will be rewarded with greater social standing and support, and dis-agreement punished with ostracism.

We relinquished our freedom that day, and we were more than happy to see it go. From that moment on we lived in true freedom, the freedom to point to someone else and say "They told me to do it! It's their fault, not mine." The freedom, God help us, to say "I was only following orders."-World War Z

People are going to behave however the social norms permit, and beyond that.

Every uniform corrupts one's character.

Am I making this decision because it's smart or because a majority says it's smart?

Well-informed cynicism is only another mode of conformity.

The young are of age when they twitter like the old; they are driven through school to learn the old song, and, when they have this by heart, they are declared of age.

Today's capitalist economic order is a monstrous cosmos, into which the individual is born and which in practice is for him, at least as an individual, simply a given, an immutable shell in which he is obliged to live. It forces on the individual, to the extent that he is caught up in the relationships of the "market," the norms of its economic activity.

The discovery of the real self can rescue a crumbling marriage, recreate a faltering career, and transform victims of "personality failure." On another plane, discovering your real self means the difference between freedom and the compulsions of conformity.

Sometimes, you must play by the rules. If only so one can break them more effectively.

novels, like racists, tend to be the same wherever you turn," writes William Giraldi,

I nijedno zlo ne može postati dobro, zato što ga prihvata ve?ina.

Little parts of my heart break off then, for Finn, for Ruby, for Charlie, for me, for all the ways we've let ourselves become who people think we should be instead of who we really are.

Al año siguiente, cuando ya no nos hablábamos, pensé que su nueva personalidad realmente tenía sentido, que besar a chicos y fumar marihuana y salir de clase dando fuertes pisotones e insultar a los profesores y básicamente comportarse unas cien veces peor y más escandalosamente de lo que eres en realidad, es lo que hay que hacer para no pensar que tienes que volver a dormir en una casa triste y gris.

All of the women in that time and place, Thea had learned, were stuffed into muslin and starched cotton and forced to sit ramrod-straight and plait their hair or pull it back off their faces with fish oil. There were shoes that laced up with a hundred eyelets, and corsets that required a special hook to open. Women were all in it together back then, as opposed to now, when one woman's experience could differ so greatly from another's that you never knew who you were talking to.

Everybody's grown-up, everybody's old, and the normal rules do apply.

Sexual debut. Sometimes it seemed to Deenie that high school was like a long game of And Then There Were None. Every Monday, another girl's debut.

Sometimes," Joe said after a bit, "it's just easier to keep being what everyone expects you to be. Even if that's what you're not, anymore.