#Conformity Quotes

“The fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.”

“I will not choose what many men desire, Because I will not jump with common spirits And rank me with the barbarous multitudes.”

“Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.”

“The masses have no habit of self-reliance or original action.”

“Manners have been somewhat cynically defined to be a contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a distance. Fashion is shrewd to detect those who do not belong to her train, and seldom wastes her attentions. Society is very swift in its instincts, and if you do not belong to it, resists and sneers at you, or quietly drops you.”

“When a man becomes a conformist, he is sacrificing the richness of independent thinking.”

“The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.”

“The common experience is, that the man fits himself as well as he can to the customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. Then he is part of the machine he moves; the man is lost.”

“Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.”

“We see young men who owe us a new world, so readily and lavishly they promise, but they never acquit the debt; they die young anddodge the account: or if they live, they lose themselves in the crowd.”

“The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force.”

“The man for whom the law exists - the man of forms, the conservative - is a tame man.”

“Our expenses are all for conformity.”

“Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel? Polonius: By the mass, and ‘tis like a camel, indeed. Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel. Polonius: It is backed like a weasel. Hamlet: Or like a whale? Polonius: Very like a whale.”

“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

“How can he [today's writer] be honored, when he does not honor himself; when he loses himself in the crowd; when he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public.”

“To beguile the time, look like the time.”

“Conformity is the ape of harmony.”

“New customs, Though they be never so ridiculous (Nay, let em be unmanly), yet are followed.”

“People seem sheathed in their tough organization.”

“The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.”

“We do not make a world of our own, but fall into institutions already made, and have to accommodate ourselves to them to be useful at all.”

“Doing as others told me, I was Blind. Coming when others called me, I was Lost. Then I left everyone, myself as well. Then I found Everyone, Myself as well.”

“Society is frivolous, and shreds its day into scraps, its conversation into ceremonies and escapes.”

“If all you do is follow the herd, you'll just be stepping in poop all day”

“When you're just like everybody else, you've nothing to offer other than your conformity.”

“I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.”

“The opposite of courage is not so much fear as it is conformity.”

“There's a big difference between oneness and sameness. Oneness implies that we're all connected and that we all come from the same source. Sameness implies that we all have to do things and exactly think the same way as everybody else does.”

“These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of everyone of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”

“Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”

“We fancy men are individuals; so are pumpkins; but every pumpkin in the field goes through every point of pumpkin history.”

“We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.”

“Conformity will be the only virtue and any man who refuses to conform will have to pay the penalty.”

“For nonconformity the world will whip you with its displeasure.”

“Americans are getting like a Ford car, they all have the same exact parts, the same upholstering and make exactly the same noises.”

“I have observed that society in general always seems to honor its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.”

“... Let the cage bird and the cage bird mate and the wild bird mate in the wild.”

“How can they knowTruth flourishes where the student's lamp has shone,And there alone, that have no solitude?So the crowd come they care not what may come.They have loud music, hope every day renewedAnd heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb.”

“I wish to speak with all respect of persons, but sometimes I must pinch myself to keep awake, and preserve the due decorum. They melt so fast into each other, that they are like grass and trees, and it needs an effort to treat them as individuals.”

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

“Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all be pure”

“In this great society wide lying around us, a critical analysis would find very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom and gross sense.”

“All think what other people think;All know the man their neighbor knows.Lord, what would they sayDid their Catullus walk that way?”

“Each man too is a tyrant in tendency, because he would impose his idea on others; and their trick is their natural defence. Jesuswould absorb the race; but Tom Paine or the coarsest blasphemer helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of power.”

“Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.”

“If you choose to lead your life just like everyone else, then what exactly is it that you have to offer?”

“Society is a republic. When an individual tries to lift themselves above others, they are dragged down by the mass, either by ridicule or slander.”

“The customer is the immediate jewel of our souls. Him we flatter, him we feast, compliment, vote for, and will not contradict.”

“A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.”