Quotes About Conformity

I grew up in a bubble. I just watched TV. I thought that's what you were supposed to do in life: sing and dance and act.

I despair of reality television, but I've never met anyone who watches it. Or people say, 'I watch it, but I hate it.' I've never met anyone who loves it. It's like, it's there, and we have to accept it.

Growing up a preacher's kid wasn't the easiest thing. Everybody's always watching you to see how you'll behave - or misbehave.

So the programs all start to all look the same. I watched one free skating competition, and I thought I was watching a short program. Everyone was doing exactly the same elements.

If you put a frog in boiling water, it'll jump straight out. If you put it in cold water and gradually bring it to the boil, it'll sit right there until it dies. Scotland has been sitting in England's gradually boiling water for so long that many people are used to it.

I was growing up in the New Wave period, but that wasn't allowed in school. I remember moments when they wouldn't let four people dressed in black stand together on the playground.

I think a lot of people saw 'Fight Club' and thought, 'Right, here's our next Che Guevara, here's our next Fidel Castro, here's someone who's going to wave the flag.' And I was like, 'No, it's just a book. And if I beat that drum, if I play that song one more time, I won't have a career.'

We have too many in Washington who are all too willing to just go along with the status quo and not make any waves.

Many of us endure pain in the service of beauty every single day. We rip off our hair with hot wax, jam our soft skin into modern-day corsets, and burn our scalps with dyes.

I had a hard enough time in high school, fitting in without having to keep up with Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook - all these ways you have to keep up your image.

We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.

One of the main uses of a home is to stay in it, when one is too weak and spiritless for conforming, without effort, to the ways of other houses.

Being young, working class, and black, everything you do is policed. If someone hits you and you hit back, you are aggressive. If you cry, you are weak. You are kind of always pretending to be something.

If people weren't watching, I'd be so much more eccentric. I know it makes me sound weak, but rather than make myself happy and wear the silly hat and say, 'Oh, I don't care,' I actually really don't feel like getting made fun of. So I put on something boring and navy and go out and try to disappear.

You don't have to fight against being placed in a box any more than the number two has to fight against being the number three. I mean, two is not going to be the number three, ever.

When people get placed upon a pedestal - when they start chasing after that person on the pedestal - they become mannequin-like.

I consciously learned and performed my race like a teacher's pet in an advanced placement course on black masculinity.

If you go out to Hollywood you'll find a lot of fantastic plastic people there in the business and a lot of people in life generally. They find it so hard to be themselves that they have to be plastic.

From 13, I knew my family was different to anybody else's. You weren't allowed to talk back at your parents or look at them funny. You weren't allowed to leave food on your plate, you weren't allowed to keep the change when you went shopping. There were a lot of rules growing up; but I don't see anything wrong with that.

Everybody was pressuring me to play basketball, so I was like, 'OK, I'll do it.'

When I was young, I just tried to please everybody.

No matter who we are, God does not adapt to please us; we always have to adapt to him.

People feel like they have to hide their true colors to please the people around them.

It is an actor's defect. I want everybody to like me, so I'll say what I think will please them.