Quotes About Conformity

this fundamental effort to get your bearings, this paradox pressed upon teenagers of distinguishing yourself from everyone in the world while taking care not to be different from anyone—

Because school has always been a matter of getting it right, of scoping out what "rightness" means to the teacher and then providing this.

No one really does know how to have fun here at all. It is all etiquette.

Education,' one of R's teachers taught, 'teaches you not to be yourself.' But who is yourself? R decided if it or he wasn't blood, it wasn't anything.

I'm sick of this society. 'Earn a living' as if I'm not yet living; lobotomized and robotized from birth, they tell me I can't do anything I want to do in the subtlest and sneakiest ways possible.

Wives were not supposed to hate their husbands. It was not in the proper order of things.

I suppose it had something to do with it being a secret, just how much it had meant to me. Maybe all of us at Hailsham had little secrets like that--little private nooks created out of thin air where we could go off alone with our fears and longings. But the very fact that we had such needs would have felt wrong to us at the time--like somehow we were letting the side down.

None of you will go to America, none of you will be film stars. And none of you will be working in supermarkets as I heard some of you planning the other day. Your lives are set out for you. You'll become adults, then before you're old, before you're even middle-aged, you'll start to donate your vital organs.

Nuestra desgracia fue haber sido hombres normales en una época que no lo era.

Maturity is highly overrated.

Stuffing people into boxes is for those who have issues about their own box.

Keepers and Seekers were not permitted to do more than trim their hair to elbow length. Ashyn said they ought to be grateful they weren't like the spirit talkers, who weren't ever allowed to cut their hair or their nails. Personally, Moria would be more concerned with the eyes plucked out, tongue cut off, and nostrils seared part of being a spirit talker, but she could see that the uncut nails might be inconvenient as well.

Everyone had heard what happened and they were all so pleased, so very pleased. Which seems a little odd, but in Cainsville "a little odd" was the norm.

Daca eram nebuna, mi-as fi dat seama? Exact asta insemna sa fii nebun, nu-i asa? Tu crezi ca esti in buna regula. Toti ceilalti au o alta parere. Poate ca eram nebuna.

Erik was one of those inadequate people who were so scared by life that they preferred to live under harsh authority, to be told what to do and what to think by a government that allowed no dissent. They were foolish and dangerous, but there were an awful lot of them. Carla

Odraslele regale se bucurau de toate lucrurile bune ale vie?ii, mai pu?in de libertate.

People don't want other people to get high, because if you get high, you might see the falsity of the fabric of the society we live in.

It wasn't the practices, I don't think, it was the feeling that the great, deadly, pointing forefinger of society was pointing at me--and the great voice of millions chanting, 'Shame. Shame. Shame.' It's society's way of dealing with someone different.

All that five thousand kids lived in those five thousand houses, owned by guys that got off the train. The houses looked so much alike that, time and time again, the kids went home by mistake to different houses and different families. Nobody ever noticed.

I'd think, That ain't me, that ain't my face. It wasn't even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn't even really me then; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted. It don't seem like I ever have been me.

Society is what decides who's sane and who isn't, so you got to measure up.

You're just a young kid. What are you doin' here? You oughta be out in a convertible, why… bird-doggin' chicks and bangin' beaver. What are ya doin' here, for Christ's sake? What's funny about that? Jesus, I mean, you guys do nothin' but complain about how you can't stand it in this place here and then you haven't got the guts just to walk out!

I discovered at an early age that I was - shall we be kind and say different? It's a better, more general word than the other one... I got sick... It was the feeling that the great, deadly pointing forefinger of society was pointing at me - and the great voice of millions chanting, Shame. Shame. Shame. It's society's way of dealing with someone different.

He hadn't let what he looked like run his life one way or the other, any more than he'd let the Combine mill him into fitting where they wanted him to fit.