Conforms To Quotes & Sayings

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. — Henry David Thoreau

You are successful if you are able to work on the kind of material that you want to - if your life conforms to your dreams, regardless of outside acceptance or acclaim. — James Franco

What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, in the face and behaviour of children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If the Holocaust didn't take place, why then did this regime of occupation come about? Why do the European countries commit themselves to defending this regime? Permit me to make one more point. We are of the opinion that, if an historical occurrence conforms to the truth, this truth will be revealed all the more clearly if there is more research into it and more discussion about it. — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

FACE ONE WEARS as an adult is a mask that's cut to fit in her youth." There are many kinds of masks, Anna thought. Theater masks and Halloween masks and surgical masks and fencing masks and diving masks and wrestling masks and ski masks. Welding visors and face cages, blindfolds and dominos. And death masks. The Doktor continued. "Every mask becomes a death mask when you can no longer put it on or take it off at will. When it conforms to the contours of your psychic face. When you mistake the persona you project for your living soul. When you can no more distinguish between the two. — Jill Alexander Essbaum

Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical and conventional pattern we have fixed for them. Thus X will never compose the immortal music that would clash with the second-rate symphonies he has accustomed us to. Y will never commit murder. Under no circumstances can Z ever betray us. We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular person the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical. We would prefer not to have known at all our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has ever seen. — Vladimir Nabokov

The more the concept of reason becomes emasculated, the more easily it lends itself to ideological manipulation and to propagation of even the most blatant lies ... Subjective reason conforms to anything. — Max Horkheimer

If New Orleans is not fully in the mainstream of culture, neither is it fully in the mainstream of time. Lacking a well-defined present, it lives somewhere between its past and its future, as if uncertain whether to advance or to retreat. Perhaps it is its perpetual ambivalence that is its secret charm. Somewhere between Preservation Hall and the Superdome, between voodoo and cybernetics, New Orleans listens eagerly to the seductive promises of the future but keeps at least one foot firmly planted in its history, and in the end, conforms, like an artist, not to the world but to its own inner being
ever mindful of its personal style. — Tom Robbins

Insanity on the other hand is an intellectual pattern. It may have biological causes but it has no physical or biological reality. No scientific instrument can be produced in court to show who is insane and who is sane. There's nothing about insanity that conforms to any scientific law of the universe. The scientific laws of the universe are invented by sanity. There's no way by which sanity, using the instruments of its own creation, can measure that which is outside of itself and its creations. Insanity isn't an 'object' of observation. It's an alteration of observation itself. There's no such thing as a 'disease' of patterns of intellect. There's only heresy. And that's what insanity really is. — Robert M. Pirsig

The immature conscience is not its own master. It simply parrots the decisions of others. It does not make judgments of its own; it merely conforms to the judgments of others. That is not real freedom, and it makes true love impossible, for if we are to love truly and freely, we must be able to give something that is truly our own to another. If our heart does not belong to us, asks Merton, how can we give it to another? — Jon Katz

That which comes after ever conforms to that which has gone before. — Marcus Aurelius

Before they are preachers, leaders or church planters, the disciples are to be lovers! This is the test of whether or not they have known Jesus. This remains the case today: this cross-love is the primary, dynamic test of whether or not we have understood the gospel word and experienced its power ... It is our cross-love for each other that proclaims the truth of the gospel to a watching and skeptical world. Our love for one another, to the extent that it imitates and conforms to the cross-love of Jesus for us, is evangelistic.
pp. 56-7 — Tim Chester

I determined to learn to pray so that my experience conforms to the words of Jesus rather than try to make his words conform to my impoverished experience. — Richard Foster

Life is not a search for experience, but for ourselves. Having discovered our own fundamental level we realize that it conforms to our own destiny and we find peace. — Cesare Pavese

The world around us
conforms to expectations
we place upon it. — J. Benson

If the law is malleable, Mr. Senlin, if it bends and conforms to man, then man will become resolute in his flaws. The law exists to give shape to man's ideals. When you think about it, doesn't mercy serve the wicked at the expense of the law? — Josiah Bancroft

No enactment of man can be considered law unless it conforms to the law of God. — William Blackstone

About the only time Congress conforms to the will of the people is when it decides to adjourn. — Evan Esar

In stamping photography with the patent of realism, society does nothing but confirm itself in the tautological certainty that an image of reality that conforms to its own representation of objectivity is truly objective. — Pierre Bourdieu

For every crime that comes before him, a judge is required to complete a perfect syllogism in which the major premise must be the general law; the minor, the action that conforms or does not conform to the law; and the conclusion, acquittal or punishment. If the judge were constrained, or if he desired to frame even a single additional syllogism, the door would thereby be opened to uncertainty. — Cesare Beccaria

If what the heart approves conforms to proper patterns, then even if one's desires are many, what harm would they be to good order? — Xun Zi

62. It is neither wise nor laudable to reduce everything to antiquity by every possible device. Thus, to cite some instances, one would be straying from the straight path were he to wish the altar restored to its primitive table form; were he to want black excluded as a color for the liturgical vestments; were he to forbid the use of sacred images and statues in Churches; were he to order the crucifixes designed that the Divine Redeemer's Body shows no trace of His cruel sufferings; lastly were he to disdain and reject polyphonic music or singing in parts, even where it conforms to regulations issued by the Holy See. — Pope Pius XII

Once established, the young girl's dependency is systematically supported as she proceeds through childhood. For being "nice" - nonchallenging, nonconfronting, noncomplaining - she's rewarded with good grades, the approval of her parents and teachers, and the affection of her peers. What reason is there for her to turn deviant or nonconformist? The going is good, so she conforms. Increasingly, she patterns herself after what's expected of her. — Colette Dowling

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness. — Edith Wharton

Though it is obligatory to hail our leaders for their sincere dedication to bringing democracy to a suffering world, perhaps in an excess of idealism, the more serious scholar/advocates of the mission of "democracy promotion" recognize that there is a "strong line of continuity" running through all administrations: the United States supports democracy if and only if it conforms to U.S. strategic and economic interests. — Noam Chomsky

It is only by demanding the impossible of the piano that you can obtain from it all that is possible. For the psychologist this means that imagination and desire are ahead of the possible reality. A deaf Beethoven created for the piano sounds never heard before and thus predetermined the development of the piano for several decades to come. The composer's creative spirit imposes on the piano rules to which it gradually conforms. That is the history of the instrument's development. I don't know of any case where the reverse occurred. — Heinrich Neuhaus

Catholics can in no way convince themselves that so enormous and unjust an in equality in the distribution of this world's goods truly conforms to the designs of the all-wise Creator. — Pope Pius XI

Yet man does recognise himself [as an animal]. But I ask you and the whole world for a generic differentia between man and ape which conforms to the principles of natural history, I certainly know of none ... If I were to call man ape or vice versa, I should bring down all the theologians on my head. But perhaps I should still do it according to the rules of science. — Carl Linnaeus

Fairy tales are loved by the child not because the imagery he finds in them conforms to what goes on within him, but because
despite all the angry, anxious thoughts in his mind to which the fairy tale gives body and specific content
these stories always result in a happy outcome, which the child cannot imagine on his own. — Bruno Bettelheim

In my experience everyone will have a different view of the right level of tax so governments need to provide clear guidance that conforms to a set of international standards that all governments accept. — Mark Zuckerberg

The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. — C.S. Lewis

Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember. — Joan Didion

My elaboration of the story always conforms to the reality at its source. It is always close to the world, the life, the reality it describes. No matter where I go, I'm still holding up a mirror. — Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski

If the intuition must conform to the nature of the objects, I do not see how we can know anything of them a priori. If, on the other hand, the object conforms to the nature of our faculty of intuition, I can then easily conceive the possibility of such an a priori knowledge. — Immanuel Kant

In order to describe a particular subculture, you might want to portray people who are typical or representative of that subculture; but to dramatize it, to make it an interesting setting for a story, you want to bring someone anomalous into that setting, to see how she conforms to it, and it to her. — Jonathan Dee

Cast your whole vote, not a piece of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless when it conforms to a majority; but is irresistable when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. — Henry David Thoreau

Civility, which is a disposition to accommodate and oblige others, is essentially the same in every country; but good breeding, asit is called, which is the manner of exerting that disposition, is different in almost every country, and merely local; and every man of sense imitates and conforms to that local good breeding of the place which he is at. — Lord Chesterfield

Some folks may be really bummed to find that "God bless America" does not appear in the Bible. So often we do things that make sense to us and ask God to bless our actions and come alongside our plans, rather than looking at the things God promises to bless and acting alongside of them. For we know that God's blessing will inevitably follow if we are with the poor, the merciful, the hungry, the persecuted, the peacemakers. But sometimes we'd rather have a God who conforms to our logic than conform our logic to the God whose wisdom is a stumbling block to the world of smart bombs and military intelligence. — Shane Claiborne

A French woman is a perfect architect in dress: she never, with Gothic ignorance, mixes the orders; she never tricks out a snobby Doric shape with Corinthian finery; or, to speak without metaphor, she conforms to general fashion only when it happens not to be repugnant to private beauty. — Oliver Goldsmith

Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic self-hood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be. As we do so, we will not only find the joy that every human being seeks
we will also find our path of authentic service in the world. — Parker J. Palmer

The spiritual path has no negative emotions and we are spiritual beings having human experience. The experiences need courage to complete the cleansing process. It defines the design that conforms to the external definitions of what we are. — Robert Jordan

Men have a great deal of pleasure in human knowledge, in studies of natural things; but this is nothing to that joy which arises from divine light shining into the soul. This spiritual light is the dawning of the light of glory in the heart. There is nothing so powerful as this to support persons in affliction, and to give the mind peace and brightness in this stormy and dark world. This knowledge will wean from the world, and raise the inclination to heavenly things. It will turn the heart to God as the fountain of good, and to choose him for the only portion. This light, and this only, will bring the soul to a saving close with Christ. It conforms the heart to the gospel, mortifies its enmity and opposition against the scheme of salvation therein revealed: it causes the heart to embrace the joyful tidings, and entirely to adhere to, and acquiesce in the revelation of Christ as our Savior. — Jonathan Edwards

We live in a world of unimaginable surprises - from the fusion energy that lights the sun to the genetic and evolutionary consequences of this light's dancing for eons upon the earth - and yet paradise conforms to our most superficial concerns with all the fidelity of a Caribbean cruise. This is wondrously strange. If one didn't know better, one would think that man, in his fear of losing all that he loves, had created heaven, along with its gatekeeper God, in his own image. — Sam Harris

Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Time spent with the sick is holy time. It is a way of praising God who conforms us to the image of His Son, who "came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many" (Mt 20:28). Jesus Himself said: "I am among you as one who serves" (Lk 22:27) — Pope Francis

There is truth in the high opinion that in so far as a man conforms, he ceases to exist. — Max Eastman

We see what we want to see, and observation conforms to hypothesis. — Bergen Evans

She loved him, but that wasn't good enough. The word "love" was required to cover such a range of emotions that it almost meant nothing at all. Since the love we distill for each beloved conforms to such a specific, rarefied recipe, with varying soupcons of resentment, pity, or lust, and sometimes even pinches of dislike, you really needed as many different words for the feeling as there were people whom you cared for in your life. — Lionel Shriver

We cannot, by total reliance on law, escape the duty to judge right and wrong ... There are good laws and there are occasionally bad laws, and it conforms to the highest traditions of a free society to offer resistance to bad laws, and to disobey them. — Alexander Bickel

When properly applied, the kamae reflects the ninja's heart.
This means that our physical nature conforms to our intentions,
and there is no division between our interior and exterior
aspects. This state of integrated mind and body action is
totally natural, and can be observed readily in the movements
of animals as they interact with their environment. Only human
beings seem to develop the need to be trained in natural body
motion. — Masaaki Hatsumi

Are you really surprised by the endurance of religion? What ideology is likely to be more durable than one that conforms, at every turn, to our powers of wishful thinking? Hope is easy; knowledge is hard. Science is the one domain in which we human beings make a truly heroic effort to counter our innate biases and wishful thinking. Science is the one endeavor in which we have developed a refined methodology for separating what a person hopes is true from what he has good reason to believe. The methodology isn't perfect, and the history of science is riddled with abject failures of scientific objectivity. But that is just the point-these have been failures of science, discovered and corrected by-what, religion? No, by good science. — Sam Harris

In every work environment, there will be politics. If you really want to rise to the top, you need to figure out what those politics in your workplace are. Then, you hook it in. You decide what conforms and what does not conform to your personal code. — Kamala Harris

The sensual man conforms thoughts to things;
the poet conforms things to his thoughts. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

They offer me neither food nor drink - intellectual nor spiritual consolation ... [Conservatism] leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal; it conforms to no intellectual standard, it is not safe, or calculated to preserve from the spoilers that degree of civilization which we have already attained. — John Maynard Keynes

When we start putting together systems to make sure that future generations obey, what we end up doing is building an institution that conforms people to a pattern. They don't have their own faith, they're living off the residue of faith of a previous generation. — Neil Cole

Modern technology easily becomes the servant of this or that want and need. In modern economy, a completely irrational consumption conforms to a totally rationalized production. A marvelously rational mechanism serves one or another demand, always with the same earnestness and precision, be it for a silk blouse or poison gas or anything whatsoever. Economic rationalism has accustomed itself to deal only with certain needs and to acknowledge only those it can "satisfy." In the modern metropolis, it has erected an edifice wherein everything runs strictly according to plan - everything is calculable. A devout Catholic, precisely following his own rationality, might well be horrified by this system of irresistible materiality. — Carl Schmitt

We don't see the life after life as it truly is, because in our eyes it conforms to our mechanics of nature. — Scott Lynch

Without poets, without artists ... everything would fall apart into chaos. There would be no more seasons, no more civilizations, no more thought, no more humanity, no more life even; and impotent darkness would reign forever. Poets and artists together determine the features of their age, and the future meekly conforms to their edit. — Guillaume Apollinaire

No person or group ever conforms completely to a type. — Timothy Keller

Tough talk often draws headlines, but war rarely conforms to slogans. — Barack Obama

Sometimes out of sheer perversion reality conforms to my wishes. — Marty Rubin

When the soul no longer conforms to the will of God, the body no longer conforms to the will of the soul. — Peter Kreeft

Audiences, whether they're seeing a film or a reading or whatever it is, a concert, they decide very quickly what kind of show it is, and then they judge it. They judge the rest of the thing by whether it conforms to their rules for what a good symphony orchestra would be. — Laurie Anderson

The mind is created when the universal consciousness conforms to societal consciousness. — Debasish Mridha

For the more a soul conforms to the sanity of others, the more does it become insane. — Mary Webb

The male dares to be different to the degree that he accepts his passivity and his desire to be female, his fagginess. The farthest out male is the dragqueen, but he, although different from most men, is exactly like all other dragqueens; like the functionalist, he has an identity - a female; he tries to define all his troubles away - but still no individuality. Not completely convinced that he's a woman, highly insecure about being sufficiently female, he conforms compulsively to the man-made feminine stereotype, ending up as nothing but a bundle of stilted mannerisms. — Valerie Solanas

But if God endures it for the sake of the benefit for you which he has foreseen in it, and if you are willing to suffer what he suffers and what passes through him to you, then it takes on the colour of God, and shame becomes honour, bitterness is sweetness and the deepest darkness becomes the clearest light. Then everything takes its flavour from God and becomes divine, for everything conforms itself to God, whatever befalls us, if we intend only him and nothing else is pleasing to us. Thus we shall grasp God in all bitterness as well as in the greatest sweetness. — Meister Eckhart

Art is not truth. Truth conforms to reality. Art invents reality. — Walter Darby Bannard

Sometimes out of sheer perversity reality conforms to my wishes. — Marty Rubin

We [Americans] inherited British law, which is like the new "reforms" that are being made now, in the sense that people are permanently entrapped in debt, if they once fall into bankruptcy. The reason that the law was changed in American history - the whole early period of the formation of the country was moving away from British law into a law that is generated here and that conforms to the sense of what is appropriate here. — Marilynne Robinson

Everything in the universe is good to the degree it conforms to the nature of God and evil as it fails to do so. - A.W. Tozer — John Bevere

The moral absolutes rest upon God's character. The moral commands He has given to men are an expression of His character. Men as created in His image are to live by choice on the basis of what God is. The standards of morality are determined by what conforms to His character, while those things which do not conform are immoral. — Francis Schaeffer

All human suffering is a variation on this theme - trying to control the waves, trying to control our present-moment experience so it conforms to our ideas and concepts of how it should be. If you want to suffer, compare this moment with your image of how it should be! I — Jeff Foster

I go now to the wilderness to be a part of it; to accept my place in the world and its place in me; to grow into reality as a tree grows into the rain, to conform to the Earth as a stream conforms to the stones of its bed. To live. To aspire. To be. — William Ashworth

The popular idea of a Potions expert within the wizarding community is of a brooding, slow-burning personality: Snape, in fact, conforms perfectly to the stereotype. — J.K. Rowling

The filter bubble tends to dramatically amplify confirmation bias - in a way, it's designed to. Consuming information that conforms to our ideas of the world is easy and pleasurable; consuming information that challenges us to think in new ways or question our assumptions is frustrating and difficult. This is why partisans of one political stripe tend not to consume the media of another. As a result, an information environment built on click signals will favor content that supports our existing notions about the world over content that challenges them. — Eli Pariser

You may be educated abroad, you may be a great scientist, politician, but you always have a sneaking fear that if you don't go to temples or do the ordinary things that you have been told to do, something evil might happen, so you conform. What happens to the mind that conforms? Investigate it, please. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

The character I have in view when I say "smug vulgarian" is, thus, not the part-time philistine, but the total type, the
genteel bourgeois, the complete universal product of triteness and mediocrity. He is the conformist, the man who
conforms to his group, and he also is typified by something else: he is a pseudo-idealist, he is pseudo-compassionate, he is
pseudo-wise. The fraud is the closest ally of the true philistine. All such great words as "Beauty," "Love," "Nature," "Truth,"
and so on become masks and dupes when the smug vulgarian employs them. — Vladimir Nabokov

Happiness, in one sense, is a function of how closely our world conforms to the infinite variety of human preference. — Malcolm Gladwell

Those who are inconstant and uninstructed should not argue with intelligent men. An intelligent man is one who conforms to God and mostly keeps silent; when he speaks he says very little, and only what is necessary and acceptable to God. — Nikodimos

There must be a judicious arrangement of all the parts. Considered conversely, the artist's task is to fill his panel with a design that conforms to its shape and is beautiful in itself. — Walter J. Phillips

Being female in this world means having been robbed of the potential for human choice by men who love to hate us. One does does not make choices in freedom. Instead, one conforms in body type and behavior and values to become an object of male sexual desire, which requires an abandonment of a wide-ranging capacity for choice ...
Men too make choices. When will they choose not to despise us? — Andrea Dworkin

But do you imagine there's a certain type of person in the world who conforms to the idea of a 'bad person'? You'll never find someone who fits that mold neatly, you know. On the whole, all people are good, or at least they're normal. The frightening thing is that they can suddenly turn bad when it comes to the crunch. That's why you have to be careful. — Soseki Natsume

It is through such failure and weeping that the Abba of Jesus conforms us to the image of His Son. Yet if our faith is not alive and dynamically operative, suffering is absurd, pointless. — Brennan Manning

A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

I do not think we will see a stateless society in my lifetime. But I am sure we will not see a state that conforms to the minarchists' ideals. The closer we get, the better, but I see no reason not to aspire for the best government as Thoreau imagined it: none at all. It's certainly more consistently idealistic than what the minarchists imagine, and yet it's at least possible, whereas the existence of a lasting, minimal state is a hopeless fantasy. — Anthony Gregory

The state of man's mind, or the elementary phase of mind which he so far possesses, conforms precisely to the state of the world as he so far views it — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

No attempt to explain the world, either scientifically or theologically, can be considered successful until it accounts for the paradoxical conjunction of the temporal and the atemporal, of being and becoming. And no subject conforms this paradoical conjuction more starkly than the origin of the universe. — Paul Davies

We must embrace struggle. Every living thing conforms to it. Everything in nature grows and struggles in its own way, establishing its own identity, insisting on it at all cost, against all resistance. — Rainer Maria Rilke

We should be suspicious when God's call conforms so neatly to our own inclinations. — Christian Wiman

Among those ways and thoughts of God, then, is the principle of accommodation. God works within human limitations - both individual and corporate - to transform the world according to his good purposes. To be blunt, God works with what he's got and with what we've got. He does not create a whole new situation but instead graciously pursues shalom in the glory and the mess we have made. The living water of the Holy Spirit pours over the extant topography of the social landscape and rarely sweeps all before it. The Spirit usually conforms himself to the contours he encounters. But as he does so, like an irresistible flow of water, he shapes them by and by, eventually making the crooked ways straight and the rough places a plain (Isa. 40:3-4). — John G. Stackhouse Jr.

If you put on an item of clothing that hurts just because you have an idea it looks better or conforms to what other people are wearing, it's dumb. — Andy Rooney

Conclusions
I. A curve has been found representing the frequency distribution of standard deviations of samples drawn from a normal population.
II. A curve has been found representing the frequency distribution of values of the means of such samples, when these values are measured from the mean of the population in terms of the standard deviation of the sample ...
III. Tables are given by which it can be judged whether a series of experiments, however short, have given a result which conforms to any required standard of accuracy or whether it is necessary to continue the investigation. — William Sealy Gosset

An artist who conforms to conventional ideas is nothing but a mere charlatan. — Michael Bassey Johnson

This exile is a fascinating symbolic act from our modern psychoanalytic viewpoint, for we have held in earlier chapters that the greatest threat and greatest cause of anxiety for an American near the end of the twentieth century is not castration but ostracism, the terrible fate of being exiled by one's group. Many a contemporary man castrates himself or permits himself to be castrated because of fear of being exiled if he doesn't. He renounces his power and conforms under the great threat and peril of ostracism.
- Rollo May, "The Tragedy of Truth About Oneself" (The Psycology of Existence: An Integrative, Clinical Perspective by Kirk Schneider and Rollo May), pp. 14-15 — Rollo May

Again, when my mind is lifted up by the greatness of its thoughts, it becomes ambitious for words and longs to match its higher inspiration with its language, and so produces a style that conforms to the impressiveness of the subject matter. — Seneca.

The scholarship of Christian academics isn't recognized as scholarship at all unless it conforms to the prevailing rules of scholarship in the academic disciplines. This forces Christian scholars to accommodate and blend in; even when their work is excellent, it isn't identified as Christian. — Greg Forster