Quotes About Conformity

that what matters is not the mind but the boot brush, not intelligence but the system, not freedom but drill. We became soldiers with eagerness and enthusiasm, but they have done everything to knock that out of us. After three weeks it was no longer incomprehensible to us that a braided postman should have more authority over us than had formerly our parents, our teachers, and the whole

Cans. We don't have to think anymore. Everything is premeditated, pre-chewed, pre-felt. Cans. All you have to do is open them. Delivered to your home three times a day. Nothing any more to cultivate yourself, or let grow and boil on the fire of questions, of doubt, and of desire. Cans.

Es sind die Uniformen. Nimm ihnen die Kostüme weg, und es gibt keinen Menschen mehr, der Soldat sein will.

Tantsitar on riides. Mantli ja kübaraga näeb ta täiesti võõras välja. Enne oli ta nõtke tiiger, nüüd jälle nagu kõik teisedki. On peaaegu uskumatu, et tal oli muutumiseks vaja vaid paar riidetükki selga tõmmata. Imelik, kuidas riided muudavad. Kui palju siis veel vormiriided.

Zuerst erstaunt, dann erbittert und schließlich gleichgültig erkannten wir, daß nicht der Geist ausschlaggebend zu sein schien, sondern die Wichsbürste, nicht der Gedanke, sondern das System, nicht die Freiheit, sondern der Drill

Today we have done an hour's saluting drill because Tjaden failed to salute a major smartly enough. Kat can't get it out of his head. "You take it from me, we are losing the war because we can salute too well," he says. Kropp

They wear grey coats and trousers and boots, but for most of them the uniform is far too big, it hangs on their limbs, their shoulders are too narrow, their bodies too slight; no uniform was ever made to these childish measurements.

recognized that what matters is not the mind but the boot brush, not intelligence but the system, not freedom but drill.

bail?s un hist?rij? p?lis sekoja jebkuram sauklim, vienalga, no kuras puses tas n?ktu, ja vien p?lim pašam nav j?dom? un j?uz?emas atbild?ba, aizst?vot kaut ko, kas vi?u bied?, bet no k? vi?š nevar izvair?ties.

Gleichschaltung.

All the young are in the net," he wrote, "anyone who tried to keep out of being a Nazi is hazed till they change their mind; a form of mass cruelty which exists only in such a country.

They will breed either dislike or a slave mentality—(Rebellion in War time being out of the question!)

You hear a lot about people who are afraid to die. Well, they're nothing compared to the ones who are afraid to live—people who go through life just making motions—and conventional motions at that.

Before you try to keep up wiht the Joneses, be sure they're not trying to keep up with you.

children are trained to want to do as the society says they have to do.

He can even give his body over to the tribe, the state, the embracing magical umbrella of the elders and their symbols; that way it will no longer be a dangerous negation for him. But there is no real difference between a childish impossibility and an adult one; the only thing that the person achieves is a practiced self-deceit—what we call the "mature" character.

Better not to be oneself, better to live tucked into others, embedded in a safe framework of social and cultural obligations and duties.

freedom is dangerous. If you follow it too willingly it threatens to pull you into the air; if you give it up too wholly, you become a prisoner of necessity. The safest thing is to toe the mark of what is socially possible.

Some are more fortunately endowed to set the implicit tone for the performance because they present a model self. The less fortunate are obliged to dance a lifetime to the performance cues of others.

But are there not many fascists in your country? There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the times comes.

That is what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you.

If the people show too much courage on this world, the society must choke them to break them - and by that, of course, kill them. The society breaks everyone, but after that many become stronger on that broken places. And those it cannot broke, it kills them.

People who interfered in your life always did it for your own good and I figured it out finally that what they wanted was for you to conform completely and never differ from some accepted surface standard and then dissipate the way traveling salesmen would at a convention in every stupid and boreing way there was.

It was easier to live under a regime than to fight it. But