Quotes About Nonconformity

You're never going to see me drinking some protein shake and doing 20 squat thrusts. I will never follow suit.

I have a lot of suits, but I'm not the kind of person who looks good in a suit. Suits are too serious for me. They are better if you can break the rules, so that's why I always try to add something crazy to them.

In the 1960s, my father chose to introduce Italian-style clothing into a world that was filled with boxy Brooks Brothers suits. So if you were dressing in his clothes in New York or California, you were breaking a rule. And my mother, Risha, who is still living, has always been an activist. I don't think my mom has met a cause she doesn't like.

I don't care about the Guggenheim. The Guggenheim isn't involved in anything that I am interested in. I don't care about motorcycles and Armani suits.

I was a sullen kid who smoked cigarettes and wore black every day, and I went to a school that was lacrosse players and Izods.

I wear clothes that most people in the Midwest would probably deem inappropriate at my age. And I rock a bikini all summer long. I know that it's not normal, but I just don't care. I live once.

A unique style comes from not being able to do things in a conventional manner. If David Byrne could have sung like Paul McCartney, he would have.

I get super bored playing bland, normal girls.

I went to a Catholic high school, and I was super rebellious. I would dress weird or play jazz. I was definitely pushing against whatever was going on.

I don't let many things that are superficial keep me in a box.

Be out of sync with your times for just one day, and you will see how much eternity you contain within you. (Letters on Life)

To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him.

Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.

Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore it if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

Life is to be lived, not controlled.

For nonconformity the world will whip you with its displeasure.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlour. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know...

Congratulate yourself if you have broken the monotony of a conventional age

A man must consider what rich realms he abdicates when he becomes a conformist

Whence is your power? From my nonconformity. I never listened to your people's law, or to what they call their gospel, and wasted my time.