Quotes About Nonconformity

Sometimes courage is nothing more than a willingness to think differently than those around you. In a

Sometimes courage is nothing more than a willingness to think differently than those around you.

There is no normal. I've never met a normal person. The concept is flawed. It implies that there is only one way people are supposed to be, and that can't possible be true. Human experience is far too varied.

Daughters were supposed to like prom dresses and getting their hair done and shopping. Stevie assumed those things were all fine and good, but she didn't understand them, really—at least not in the way that you were supposed to understand them. She never once in her life felt the desire to dress up

Fine," he said. "Anything is better than doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

People turned to look at Howard Roark as he passed. Some remained staring after him with sudden resentment. They could give no reason for it: it was an instinct his presence awakened in most people. Howard Roark saw no one. For him, the streets were empty. He could have walked there naked without concern.

We wish to be damned with you, rather than blessed with all our brothers. Do

Look," said Roark evenly, and pointed at the window. "Can you see the campus and the town? Do you see how many men are walking and living down there? Well, I don't give a damn what any or all of them think about architecture—or about anything else, for that matter. Why should I consider what their grandfathers thought of it?

why should you care what people will say? All you have to do is please yourself.

People turned to look at Howard Roark as he passed. Some remained staring after him with sudden resentment. They could give no reason for it: it was an instinct his presence awakened in most people.

What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree, and to obey?

people who listen and don't give a damn, but sit there in order to tell their friends that they have attended a lecture by a famous name. All second-handers.

He walked through the streets of New York, wearing a broad-brimmed hat, a dark business suit, a pale green satin shirt, a vest of white brocade, a huge black bow emerging from under his chin, and he carried a staff, not a cane, but a tall ebony staff surmounted by a bulb of solid gold. It was as if his huge body were resigned to the conventions of a prosaic civilization and to its drab garments, but the oval of his chest and stomach sallied forth, flying the colors of his inner soul.

She's like nothing you bastards ever dreamed of!

La curiosité, disait-elle, est la forme la plus pure de l'insoumission.

Much of my rebelliousness starts with indifference to what is urgently important to others.

If I kept trying to be what everybody wanted, I'd soon be insipid enough to fit in everywhere.

One thing I learned from Mr. Armstrong while striving heartily to remain uneducated: a good story doesn't just copy life, it pushes back on it. It's why guys like Chartrain wear their clothes too big and their teeth edged with gold, why Mr. Dick puts words on kites and sends them to the sun. It's why I draw what I draw.

One thing I learned from Mr. Armstrong while striving heartily to remain uneducated: a good story doesn't just copy life, it pushes back on it. It's why guys like Chartrain wear their clothes too big and their teeth edged with gold, why Mr. Dick puts words on kites and sends them to the sun.

She ran her own train. She didn't feel she had to get married, she wore her hair and makeup the way she wanted to, she furnished her home the way she wanted to, she did everything the way she wanted to.

True discipline means channeling our best hours into first-order objectives, and that means being a nonconformist in the best sense.

Be tasteless, rude, and offensive, Live in a swamp and be three dimensional, Put a live chicken in your underwear, Get all excited and go to a yawning festival.

This new, reactionary music was called Punk. It tossed the dominant Rock culture into the garbage can. The only rule was to break the rules.

Creativity comes by breaking the rules, by saying that you're in love with the anarchist.