Conformity Quotes - Page 2

• If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good.

  Thomas Watson, Jr.

  Inspirational, Leadership, Wisdom

  "Managing technology products" by Joseph Mancuso, (p. 160), 1975.

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• Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

  Barry Goldwater

  Father, Equality, Differences

  Speech Accepting the Republican Presidential Nomination, delivered 16 July 1964, San Francisco

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• Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent.

  Virginia Woolf

  Numbness, People, Soul

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2280, Delphi Classics

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• The credit which the apparent conformity with recognized scientific standards can gain for seemingly simple but false theories may, as the present instance shows, have grave consequences.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Simple, May, Gains

  "New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Part I: "Philosophy ". Chapter 2: "The Pretence of Knowledge", p. 29, 1978.

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• Love allows your beloved the freedom to be unlike you. Attachment asks for conformity to your needs and desires. Love imposes no demands. Attachment expresses an overwhelming demand - "Make me feel whole." Love expands beyond the limits of two people. Attachment tries to exclude everything but two people.

  Deepak Chopra

  Marriage, Soulmate, Attachment

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• Although images of perfection in people's personal lives can cause unhappiness, images of perfect societies - utopian images - can cause monstrous evil. In fact, forcefully changing society to conform to societal images was the greatest cause of evil in the twentieth century.

  Dennis Prager

  People, Evil, Perfect

  FaceBook post by Dennis Prager from May 02, 2012

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• Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Reality, Doe, Ideals

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• Rebel children, I urge you, fight the turgid slick of conformity with which they seek to smother your glory.

  Russell Brand

  Children, Fighting, Rebel

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• That man is a creature who needs order yet yearns for change is the creative contradiction at the heart of the laws which structure his conformity and define his deviancy.

  Freda Adler

  Change, Heart, Men

  "Sisters in Crime: The Rise of the New Female Criminal". Book by Freda Adler, 1975.

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• Group conformity scares the pants off me because it's so often a prelude to cruelty towards anyone who doesn't want to - or can't - join the Big Parade.

  Bette Midler

  Scare, Groups, Want

  Bette Midler (1980). “A View from a Broad”, Simon & Schuster

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• Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of "crackpot" than the stigma of conformity.

  Thomas J. Watson

  Life, Motivational, Fear

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• The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species, bent on ensuring his salvation, security, and sanity.

  Thomas Szasz

  Religious, Men, Roots

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• Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Inspiration, Science, Artist

  Vincent van Gogh, Mark Roskill (1997). “The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh”, p.173, Simon and Schuster

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• Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Inspirational, Being Yourself, Freedom

  Attributed to "Essais" by Michel de Montaigne, 1595.

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• Communism is the death of the soul. It is the organization of total conformity - in short, of tyranny - and it is committed to making tyranny universal.

  Adlai E. Stevenson

  Organization, Soul, Communism

  "Books of the Times" by Charles Poore, The New York Times, p. 23, April 20, 1953.

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• Morality is a test of our conformity rather than our integrity.

  Jane Rule

  Integrity, Tests, Morality

  Jane Rule (2013). “Lesbian Images: Essays”, p.21, Open Road Media

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• The virtue in most request is conformity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Self Reliance, Aversion, Virtue

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1808). “Select Essays and Poems”, p.32

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• The marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading "Keep Off.

  Carl Sandburg

  Reading, Men, Rebellion

  Carl Sandburg (2003). “The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg”, p.48, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We are citizens of an age, as well as of a State; and if it is held to be unseemly, or even inadmissible, for a man to cut himself off from the customs and manners of the circle in which he lives, why should it be less of a duty, in the choice of his activity, to submit his decision to the needs and the taste of his century?

  Friedrich Schiller

  Cutting, Men, Circles

  Friedrich Schiller (2012). “On the Aesthetic Education of Man”, p.25, Courier Corporation

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• With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.

  Norman Mailer

  Wall, Pride, Artist

  Norman Mailer (2013). “The Deer Park: A Novel”, p.368, Random House

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• From now on, I'll connect the dots my own way.

  Bill Watterson

  Way, Dots, My Own

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• I merely observe that all living things are manipulated. As long as there is a will, it is bent and twisted constantly. Only the dead are allowed the luxury of freedom, and then only because they want nothing, and therefore can't be thwarted.

  Orson Scott Card

  Luxury, Long, Want

  Orson Scott Card (2002). “Songmaster”, p.4, Macmillan

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• When some folks agree with my opinions I begin to suspect I'm wrong.

  Kin Hubbard

  Moral, Opinion, Manners

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• He who lives among dogs must learn to pant.

  Fred Hoyle

  Dog

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• We are half ruined by conformity, but we should be wholly ruined without it.

  Charles Dudley Warner

  Being Different, Half, Should

  Charles Dudley Warner (1870). “My Summer in a Garden”, p.172

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