Nonconformity Quotes

Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.

Jack Kerouac

Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

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Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

John F. Kennedy

Inspirational, Being Yourself, Freedom

Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

Henry David Thoreau

Success, Music, Forgiveness

Walden ch. 18 (1854). Frequently quoted as "marches to the tune of a different drummer."

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Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.

Dr. Seuss

Life, Smile, Graduation

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Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.

Albert Einstein

Inspirational, Life, Being Yourself

Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.149, Princeton University Press

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In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service.

John Stuart Mill

Political, Age, Example

John Stuart Mill (1989). “J. S. Mill: 'On Liberty' and Other Writings”, p.67, Cambridge University Press

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For nonconformity the world will whip you with its displeasure.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

World, Whips, Displeasure

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Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication, and courage. But if we don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us --- and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.

Carl Sagan

Atheist, Ocean, Dedication

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the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

Steve Jobs

Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!

George Bernard Shaw

Forgiveness, Believe, Law

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A free society cherishes nonconformity.
It knows from the non-conformist, from the eccentric,
have come many of the great ideas.

Henry Steele Commager

Ideas, Eccentric, Cherish

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No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Being Yourself, Lonely, Loneliness

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He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.

Albert Einstein

Love, Inspirational, Life

"Mein Weltbild (My World-view)". Essay by Albert Einstein, 1931.

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They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.

Antonio Porchia

Creativity, Criticism, Conformity

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It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

Herman Melville

Inspirational, Life, Motivational

Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, G. Thomas Tanselle (1987). “Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860: Volume Nine, Scholarly Edition”, p.247, Northwestern University Press

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Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds!

Bob Marley

Inspirational, Music, Song

"Redemption Song" (song) (1980)

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Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than what we suspect of what we think.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Father, Thinking, Done

"The Path of the Law". Address to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Harvard Law Review, Volume 10, March 25, 1897.

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The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Education, Children, Growing Up

Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.63, Penguin

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People would rather be wrong than be different.

Henry Jacobsen

Inspiration, People, Being Different

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You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.

Winston Churchill

Inspirational, Funny, Life

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Where all think alike there is little danger of innovation.

Edward Abbey

Thinking, Thought Provoking, Innovation

Edward Abbey (1988). “Desert Solitaire”, p.158, University of Arizona Press

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When I was four years old they tried to test my IQ, they showed me this picture of three oranges and a pear. They asked me which one is different and does not belong; they taught me different was wrong.

Ani DiFranco

Years, Orange, Individuality

Ani DiFranco (2011). “Ani DiFranco: Verses”, p.10, Seven Stories Press

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Those who can’t change their minds can’t change anything.

George Bernard Shaw

Change, Life Changing, People Changing

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New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.

John Locke

Business, Philosophy, War

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding "Dedicatory Epistle" (1690)

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Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.

Eric Hoffer

Doe, Woe, Conformity

"Reflections on the Human Condition" by Eric Hoffer, (Section 50), 1973.

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