quotations about conformity
Young men are pretty much like a drove of sheep; any one who takes a decided line on certain matters, is sure to lead all the rest.
THOMAS HUGHES
Tom Brown at Oxford
I would prefer to speak openly and like an oracle to give answers serviceable to all mankind, even though no one should understand me, rather than to conform to popular opinions and so win the praise freely scattered by the mob.
EPICURUS
"Vatican Sayings", XXIX
Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority.
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
Strength to Love
The biggest problem with this staid world was the overwhelming demand for conformity. Everything was so eerily definitive: assent to the mandates of society would see you on the rise, but dissent was a steady downward path.
DJANGO WYLIE
The Middle
Perhaps, if one wishes to remain an individual in the midst of the teeming multitudes, one must make oneself grotesque.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Midnight's Children
Trumpet in a herd of elephants;
Crow in the company of cocks;
Bleat in a flock of goats.
MALAY PROVERB
"But," said Emma, "one must, after all, follow, to a certain extent, the opinion of the world and conform to its morality."
"Ah! but then there are two moralities. The petty, the conventional one, that of men, that which varies unceasingly and bawls so loudly, that one grovels below, close to the earth, like this assembly of idiots which you behold. But the other, the eternal, is all around and above us, like the landscape that encircles us and the blue heaven that gives us light."
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Madame Bovary
The race of men, while sheep in credulity, are wolves for conformity.
CARL VAN DOREN
attributed, The Harper Book of Quotations
The majority of people want to be like others, and this drives them to a death in life. It is necessary to find what distinguishes us from others in order to be something. To the extent that we try to be like others, we convert ourselves into zombies.
ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY
Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy
In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.
PETER USTINOV
The Wit of Peter Ustinov