Quotes About Conformity

The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous rather than cowardly.

You are mistaken, he said smoothly. That boy is not your son. He belongs to society and the State, and I am society and the State. I will take him anywhere I want, I will order him to do anything I care to have done, and I will shoot him if he disobeys.

I suddenly remembered that Adolph Hitler once said that anybody who paints the sky green should be sterilized at once. I thought I understood the Right Man more deeply. The Right Man stays in one reality-tunnel because wandering into the reality-labyrinth of the creative mind terrifies him.

The obedient always think about themselves as virtuous, rather than cowardly.

Businessmen learn the way businessmen are supposed to be. Professors learn the way professors are supposed to be. Construction workers learn how construction workers are supposed to be. They spend their lives trying to be what they're supposed to be and being scared they aren't. Quiet desperation.

But procedure is procedure," I said. "Un-huh." "Why I left the cops," I said. "You left the cops because they canned your ass for being an insubordinate fucking hot dog," Healy said. "Well, yeah," I said. "That too.

Go get your bus, square boy.

They tell you to do your thing but they don't mean it. They don't want you to do your own thing, not unless it happens to be their thing, too. It's a laugh, Goober, a fake. Don't disturb the universe, Goober, no matter what the posters say.

They tell you to do your thing but they don't mean it. They don't want you to do your thing, not unless it happens to be their thing, too. It's a laugh, a fake. Don't disturb the universe, no matter what the posters say.

They tell you to do your thing but they don't mean it. They don't want you to do your thing, not unless it happens to be their thing, too.

Ted Kemp lived in a residential development six blocks west of the highway. The homes were small, set close, and identical, as if the developer's plan had been to cap the land with beige stucco, clay tile, and anonymity

We're not so different." The girl burst out laughing. "Ohmigod! Oh my God—dude! Maybe you're high!" Pike put the car in gear, but kept his foot on the brake. Their sameness seemed obvious. "You want to be seen; me, I want to be invisible. It's all the same." The girl stared at him, then straightened herself the way he had straightened himself. She said, "An idealist.

One broad class difference in parenting norms turns up in virtually all studies: well-educated parents aim to raise autonomous, independent, self-directed children with high self-esteem and the ability to make good choices, whereas less educated parents focus on discipline and obedience and conformity to pre-established rules.

The problem is that we humans are deep conformists.

The vast majority of people conform to whatever is normal for the time.

Understand this: The world wants to assign you a role in life. And once you accept that role you are doomed. Your

At certain points in history it may be fashionable to be different and rebellious, but if a lot of people are playing that role, there is nothing different or rebellious about it.

It has an edge because it is so different. Soon imitators pop up everywhere. It becomes a fashion, something to conform to, even if the comformity appears to be rebellious and edgy. This can drag on for ten, twenty years; it eventually becomes a cliche, ppure style without any real emotion or need.

Your false self is the accumulation of all the voice you have internalized from other people-parents and friends who want you to conform to their ideas of what you should be like and what you should do, as well as societal pressures to adhere to certain values that can easily seduce you. It also includes the voice of your own ego, which constantly tries to protect you from from unflattering truths.

Madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups. —Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

The world wants to assign you a role in life and once you except that role you are doomed.

Why can't fellows be allowed to do what they like when they like and as they like, instead of other fellows sitting on banks and watching them all the time and making remarks and poetry and things about them?

In a world in which the personal is widely believed to be the political, the sheep of toleration soon turns into the wolf that demands acceptance, indeed, admiration.

Change Tactic: Bad habits are almost always a social disease—if those around us model and encourage them, we'll almost always fall prey.