Quotes & Sayings About Conformists

The problem is that we humans are deep conformists. — Robert Greene

Don't you get tired of seeing so many "non-conformists" with the same non-conformist look? — Thomas Sowell

It's easy to assume people are conforming when we witness them all choosing the same option, but when we choose that very option ourselves, we have no shortage of perfectly good reasons for why we just happen to be doing the same thing as those other people; they mindlessly conform, but we mindfully choose. This doesn't mean that we're all conformists in denial. It means that we regularly fail to recognize that others' thoughts and behaviors are just as complex and varied as our own. Rather than being alone in a crowd of sheep, we're all individuals in sheep's clothing. — Sheena Iyengar

You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists. — Abbie Hoffman

People might consider you eccentric for being different, but this is good. Leaders and visionaries are not conformists afraid of standing out. — Fennel Hudson

Only conformists are ever adored. — Catherine Breillat

The only true non-conformists are in the asylums; the only radically free spirits are in the death house awaiting the chair. We live by patterns. — Herman Wouk

If children were brought up to become non-conformists it would only ruin their lives. So parents all over China who loved their children told them to do as Chairman Mao said. It was not possible to tell them anything else. — Jung Chang

The test of character posed by the gentleness of God's approach to us is especially dangerous for those formed by the ideas that dominate our modern world. We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can be almost as stupid as a cabbage, as long as you doubt. The fashion of the age has identified mental sharpness with a pose, not with genuine intellectual method and character. Only a very hardy individualist or social rebel
or one desperate for another life
therefore stands any chance of discovering the substantiality of the spiritual life today. Today it is the skeptics who are the social conformists, though because of powerful intellectual propaganda they continue to enjoy thinking of themselves as wildly individualistic and unbearably bright. — Dallas Willard

Don't get caught up in fashion games. These kids probably think we're old, nark conformists or something, but really, they're just conforming in their own ways. They're conforming to nonconformity. — Richelle Mead

Why is it that all non-conformists look the same? — Billy Corgan

Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart peers over conventional careers like management consulting and investment banking. For the privilege of being turned into conformists, students (or their families) pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in skyrocketing tuition that continues to outpace inflation. Why are we doing this to ourselves? — Peter Thiel

You must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

But without the conformists, the great atrocities would have been impossible. — Timothy Snyder

We need more people speaking out. This country is not overrun with rebels & free thinkers. It's overrun with sheep & conformists. — Bill Maher

Wild birds will kill exotic ones: the budgies and the lovebirds and the yellow canaries
escaped from their cages and hoping to get a taste of the sky
usually end up back on the ground, plucked raw by their more conformist cousins — Joanne Harris

What the masses don't realize is that they're looking for a shepherd. Those who don't think they can be influenced or call themselves 'independent thinkers' are usually the biggest conformists of all - and the easiest to turn. Why do you think cults prey on college students? Easy picking. — Richard Paul Evans

That was exactly what happened - the conformists showed less brain activity in the frontal, decision-making regions and more in the areas of the brain associated with perception. Peer pressure, in other words, is not only unpleasant, but can actually change your view of a problem. — Susan Cain

THE PUZZLE IS WHY SO MANY PEOPLE LIVE so badly. Not so wickedly, but so inanely. Not so cruelly, but so stupidly. There is little to admire and less to imitate in the people who are prominent in our culture. We have celebrities but not saints. Famous entertainers amuse a nation of bored insomniacs. Infamous criminals act out the aggressions of timid conformists. Petulant and spoiled athletes play games vicariously for lazy and apathetic spectators. People, aimless and bored, amuse themselves with trivia and trash. Neither the adventure of goodness nor the pursuit of righteousness gets headlines. — Eugene H. Peterson

We are the prisoners of our thoughts; we are conformists. We fear new thoughts, new ideas, and new adventures. — Debasish Mridha

The least favorite students were the non-conformists who made up their own rules. Teachers tend to discriminate against highly creative students, labeling them as troublemakers. In — Adam M. Grant

Sometimes when you hire people who have to pass a Mr. Congeniality test, you end up losing some of the non-conformists who will give you different views and perspectives. — Nolan Bushnell

America was not built by conformists, but by mutineers. — Jim Hightower

Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers. — Marshall McLuhan

This is what one of the founding fathers of sociology, Emile Durkheim, meant when he wrote in 1895 that the establishment of a sense of community is facilitated by a class of actors who carry a stigma and sense of stigmatization and are termed 'deviant.' Unity is provided to any collectivity by uniting against those who are seen as a common threat to the social order and morality of a group. Consequently, the stigma and the stigmatization of some persons demarcates a boundary that reinforces the conduct of conformists. Therefore, a collective sense of morality is achieved by the creation of stigma and stigmatization and deviance. — Gerhard Falk

Your path is yours alone. And if it's the path less traveled, that's absolutely fine. The world doesn't need more conformists. The world needs more people who create and question and search. — Laird Hamilton

Our Western society is so deeply divided between these two approaches (moralism, self-discovery) that hardly anyone can conceive of any other way to live. If you criticize or distance yourself from one, everyone assumes you have chosen to follow the other, because each of these approaches tends to divide the whole world into two basic groups. The moral conformists say: "the immoral people
the people who 'do their own thing'
are the problem with the world, and moral people are the solution." The advocates of self-discovery say: "The bigoted peole
the people who say, 'We have the Truth'
are the problem with the world, and progressive people are the solution. — Timothy Keller

We can raise our sights high when we're willing to break free from being conformists who live a conventional life simply because we are too afraid to express our uniqueness. — Alexandra Stoddard

antisocial behavior is a trait of intelligence in a world of conformists. — Nikola Tesla

Society in General Always Seems to Honor its Living Conformists & its Dead Troublemakers — Wayne Dyer

We like to believe that we live in a grand age of creative individualism. We look back at the midcentury era in which the Berkeley researchers conducted their creativity studies, and feel superior. Unlike the starched-shirted conformists of the 1950s, we hang posters of Einstein on our walls, his tongue stuck out iconoclastically. We consume indie music and films, and generate our own online content. We "think different" (even if we got the idea from Apple Computer's famous ad campaign). But the way we organize many of our most important institutions - our schools and our workplaces - tells a very different story. — Susan Cain

Conformists die, but heretics live forever. — Elbert Hubbard

Here's a frustrating thing about me: if everyone else is happy, I usually can't stay pissed off. My moods are conformists. It sucks, because sometimes you really want to be angry. — Becky Albertalli

Anti-social behaviour is a trait of intelligence in a world full of conformists. — Anonymous

Now let's repeat the non-conformists' oath: I promise to be different! (audience repeats) I promise to be unique! (audience repeats) I promise not to repeat things other people say! (audience repeats, laughs) Good! — Steve Martin

Films might get to you and your subconscious and make a little difference, but when the vigilante drum beats, the mob screams and the conformists go along with it. There have to be people who are non-conformists. — Oliver Stone

What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There's no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told-and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion. Next question. — Michael Crichton

In almost any society I think, the quality of the nonconformists is likely to be just as good as and no better than that of the conformists. — Margaret Mead

Cat people are different, to the extent that they generally are not conformists. How could they be, with a cat running their lives? — Louis J. Horvitz

We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion. — Michael Crichton

I have never cared much for people. Most of them are cowards, conformists, muddleheads, moneygrubbers, and they infect each other. — Cees Nooteboom

Rebels and non-conformists are often the pioneers and designers of change. — Indira Gandhi

Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society ... but for me and no one else, education means making creators ... You have to make inventors, innovators ... not conformists — Jean Piaget

They pay thousands and thousands for the Van Goghs and Modiglianis they'd have spat on at the time they were painted. Guffawed at. Made coarse jokes about. — John Fowles

To be able to accept everything that comes our way, even the things we don't want to accept, is the art of Love. However, this acceptance isn't to become conformists or martyrs. The art of accepting has to do with surrendering the need for control; it's ceasing the effort to regulate our environment and manipulate the human beings, as well as the other creatures, within it.
"When we give up our attachment to the outcome and rest our minds in a peaceful state, then we have a better chance to act free from the results. Such a state of surrender could be described as "just be-ing".
"Whatever happens is an indication that at some level we're ready for it, or at least we've got all the tools required in order to become ready, and face any problem or obstacle that may arise along this path. — Nityananda Das

All right, Pendel had lied to him, if lying was the word. He had told Osnard what he wanted to hear and gone to extraordinary lengths to obtain it for him, including making it up. Some people lied because lying gave them a kick, made them feel braver or cleverer than all the lowly conformists who went on their bellies and told the truth. Not Pendel. Pendel lied to conform. To say the right things at all times, even if the right things were in one place, and the truth was in another. — John Le Carre

Only sad sacks and conformists need things like no kiss on New Year's Eve to remind them to feel lonely. They're as bad as the people who need St. Patty's Day as an excuse to get drunk or Halloween to wear slutty outfits. You can feel sorry for yourself and dress like a hooker all year round: Hallmark never needs to know. — Julie Klausner

Our schools display an enormous bias in educating the mind rather than the whole person. We place major emphasis on reasoning, logic and math, with almost no concern for emotions, intuition and creativity. Our students become memorizing mimics and dull conformists, rather than exciting and feeling creators. — John Bradshaw