Never Conform Quotes & Sayings

Each of you knows that the foundation of our faith is charity. Without it, our religion would crumble. We will never be truly Catholic unless we conform our entire lives to the two commandments that are the essence of the Catholic faith: to love the Lord, our God, with all our strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. — Pier Giorgio Frassati

At every point I am besieged by people who would like me to conform to some social norm of whatever sort of social group they expect me to be a part of. I never have any identification with these social groups. — Sean Parker

I'd like to return to prose after a fifteen-year hiatus. An epistolary novella maybe. A man went into the mountains fifteen years ago to write the following letter to a woman: "Dear B., I'd like to strike you down with an iron rod. Maybe I love you. If you feel the same way and your wishes conform to mine, then please please get in touch with me posthaste. We'll discuss this matter together and make the necessary arrangements if everything works out. With warm wishes, Your Bernd." The letter is, however, never mailed and never written. In further letters to B. from Bernd, he pursues, among other things, the question: why? The last letter could be the one in which Bernd lets B. know that the matter has been settled since he has just been struck down by a group of women with iron rods. — Urs Allemann

God's Word will never pass away, but looking back to the Old Testament and since the time of Christ, with tears we must say that because of a lack of fortitude and faithfulness on the part of God's people, God's Word has many times been allowed to be bent, to conform to the surrounding, passing, changing culture of that moment rather than to stand as the inerrant Word of God judging the form of the world spirit and the surrounding culture of that moment. In the name of The Lord Jesus Christ, may our children and grandchildren not say that such can be said about us. — Francis A. Schaeffer

There are thousands of people who have had some form of emotional experience that they refer to as conversion but who have never been truly converted to Christ. Christ demands a change in the way you live - and if your life does not conform to your experience, then you have every reason to doubt your experience! — Billy Graham

You're created not to conform. You're unique. Find your lane. No one is like you. Your like never has been made before, will never again... — Assegid Habtewold

Presently, many behavioral and social scientists hold the deficit thinking model in disrepute - arguing that it is unduly simplistic, lacks empirical verification, more ideological than scientific, grounded in classism and racism, and offers counterproductive educational prescriptions for school success. However, because deficit thinking is so protean, taking different forms to conform to what is politically acceptable at the moment, and while the popularity of different revisions may change, it never ceases to be important in determining school policy and practice. Given — Richard R. Valencia

Making negative assumptions based on a person's weight is never healthy. Overweight or thin, it sends the same damaging message: Your body does not conform. — Melissa Milne

Profanation and violation are part of the perversity of sex, which never will conform to liberal theories of benevolence. Every model of morally or politically correct sexual behavior will be subverted by nature's daemonic law. — Camille Paglia

I know I'm never going to be a big pop star, because I'm not willing to conform. — Justin Townes Earle

There are plenty of people in the world whose lives are governed by rote and routine. Such people will never be happy dealing with me, because I don't conform. Luckily, the world is also full of people who care about results, and those people are usually very happy with me, because my Asperger's compels me to be the ultimate expert in whatever field of interest I choose. And with substantial knowledge, I can obtain good results. — John Elder Robison

Tell me, McFadden, what do you think of our beloved Mr. Chamberlain? Mac didn't care for such direct questions. All his adult life had been spent in the mentality of the gulag, never openly complaining, always seeming to conform, never risking a row. Perhaps that's why he had agreed to marry, not so much to avoid disappointing the lady but more because it was the simplest way to fit into the flow of things. — Michael Dobbs

Science has never killed or persecuted a single person for doubting or denying its teaching, and most of these teaching have been true; but religion has murdered millions for doubting or denying her dogmas and most of these dogmas have been false.
All stories about gods and devils, of heavens and hells, as they do not conform to nature, and are not apparent to sense, should be rejected without consideration. Beyond the universe there is nothing and within the universe the supernatural does not and cannot exist.
Of all deceivers who have plagued mankind, none are so deeply ruinous to human happiness as those imposters who pretend to lead by a light above nature.
The lips of the dead are closed forever. There comes no voice from the tomb. Christianity is responsible for having cast the fable of eternal fire over almost every grave. — Gratis P. Spencer

To seek understanding before taking action, yet to trust my instincts when action is called for. Never to avoid danger from fear, never to seek out danger for its own sake. Never to conform to fashion from fear of eccentricity, never to be eccentric from fear of conformity. — Steven Brust

Men are recognizing that they have been forced to conform to a very narrow and rather two-dimensional picture of maleness and manhood that they have never had the freedom to question. — Andrew Cohen

Fairytales have rules. We may never understand them but they've been hammered into our heads since infancy. Eventually, even the rebels conform. — Angela Parkhurst

New Ten Commandments' from today, which I happened to find on an atheist website.103 Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you. In all things, strive to cause no harm. Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect. Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted. Live life with a sense of joy and wonder. Always seek to be learning something new. Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them. Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you. Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others. Question everything. — Richard Dawkins

It is not strange that some of our revoltes preach trial marriage: for the only safe way to marry them at all would be on trial. Until you had definitely experienced all the human situations with them, you would have no means of knowing how, in any given situation, they would behave. They might conform about evening-dress, and throw plates between courses; they might be charming to your friends, and ask the waiter to sit down and finish dinner with you. Or they might in all things, little and big, be irreproachable. The point is that you would never know. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

They wanted their girls to be safe. To do what they had to do to conform, to defer, to survive, to grow up. They wanted their girls never to grow up. Never to stop burning. They wanted their girls to say fuck it, to see through the lies, to know their own strength. They wanted their girls to believe the things could be different this time, and they wanted it to be true.
They wondered, sometimes, if they'd made a mistake. If it was dangerous, taming the wild, stealing away the words a girl might use to name her secret self. They wondered at the consequences of teaching a girl she was weak instead of warning her she was strong. They wondered, if knowing was power, what happened to power that refused to know itself; they wondered what happened that couldn't be satisfied, to pain that couldn't be felt, a rage that couldn't be spoken. — Robin Wasserman

What never fails inside the mind of an intellectual never works outside the confines of his head. The world's stubborn refusal to vindicate the intellectual's theories serves as proof of humanity's irrationality, not his own. Thus, the true believer retrenches rather than rethinks; he launches a war on the world, denying reality because it fails to conform to his theories. If intellectuals are not prepared to reconcile theory and practice, then why do they bother to venture outside the ivory tower or the coffeehouse? Why not stay in the world of abstractions and fantasy? — Daniel J. Flynn

A biography is never a biography of one person, of course, but the individual life of your protagonist will never conform. It will always bang up against history. — Rachel Holmes

It points, for instance, to the fact that there is never an abstract, single 'Christian answer' to an issue to which all Christians are bound to adhere or conform. — William Stringfellow

If you conform, you can never reform. — Debasish Mridha

Human beings today ... are surrounded by huge institutions we can never penetrate: the City [London's Wall Street], the banking system, political and advertising conglomerates, vast entertainment enterprises. They've made themselves user friendly, but they define the tastes to which we conform. They're rather subtle, subservient tyrants, but no less sinister for that. — J.G. Ballard

All this is to say, if your present community sees your spiritual journey as a problem because you are wandering off their beach blanket, it may be time to find another community. One should never do that impulsively. But if after a time you are sensing that you do not belong, that you are a problem to be corrected rather than a valued member of the community, maybe God is calling you elsewhere and to find for yourself that "they" aren't so bad after all. That decision is very personal (sometimes involving whole families) and can take some courage to make, but it is worth the risk. One thing is certain: if you stay where you are without any change at all, the pressure to either conform or keep quiet will work in you like a slow-acting poison. And if you go too far down that road, it can be a tough haul coming back from bitterness and resentment - especially for children. — Peter Enns

Greek women were not allowed to be: free and untamed. In fact, Artemis is a bit of a paradox. On the one hand, her commitment to purity must have been greatly admired by Ancient Greeks; yet she is also untamable and answers to no man. She is truly the eternal wild child who never has to grow up and shoulder the responsibilities that adulthood brings. She never has to compromise herself or conform to any of society's standards. No wonder she is associated with the moon - completely untouchable, forever unattainable. If offered the option of becoming one of Artemis' immortal maidens, freed forever from the shackles of marriage or slavery, I think many Ancient Greek women would have jumped on that bandwagon as it careened past — Rick Riordan

Maybe it's easier to conform, to stay in a job I hate to pay bills of the things I don't even enjoy and marry a man I'm not passionately in love with, whilst surrounded by those who have absolutely no life to their smile but I don't want easy. I never have. I want a life so fucking grande' I reach every little milestone in sweats or tears knowing I Followed what was true to my heart. I don't care if I walk alone for the rest of my days, if it means I get to stay true to myself. — Nikki Rowe

The person who is a lost sinner has a problem with sin. That is, he is under God's wrath and curse, at alienation with God, an enemy of truth and righteousness. His relationship with God is warfare! And until one bows down to God in humble confession and commits himself in faith to Jesus Christ, he will never be reconciled to God. That's the essence of sin: rebellion against the living God. The saved sinner, on the other hand, struggles with sins (plural). He now walks with Christ, but by the same faith seeks grace to overcome remaining habits and failures as the Spirit works to conform him to the image of Christ. What does this mean in practice? I do not spend time talking with a non-Christian about his sins. That's not his problem. His problem is his sin: his broken relationship with God. — Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

He had been through hell and survived, and his reward had come in the form of a woman who could bend but not break, challenge but not conform, submit but not surrender. Naiya was his. Totally, utterly, and irrevocably. And he would never let her go. — Sarah Castille

You're made aware of what the industry is and what you need to conform to; I don't fit that, and I'm never going to. — Jessie Cave

Why are we, with all our "progress," so limited in understanding & sympathy & the ability to give each other real freedom? Why with our emphasis on the individual are we still so blinded by the urge to conform? ... I think above all else it is freedom I search for in my work, in these far-flung places, to find a group of people who give each other the room to be in whatever way they need to be. And maybe I will never find it all in one culture but maybe I find parts of it in several cultures, maybe I can piece it together like a mosaic and unveil it to the world. — Lily King

It is when we think we can act like God, that all respect is lost, and I think this is the downfall of peace. We lie if we say we do not see color and culture and difference. We fool ourselves and cheat ourselves when we say that all of us are the same. We should not want to be the same as others and we should not want others to be the same as us. Rather, we ought to glory and shine in all of our differences, flaunting them fabulously for all to see! It is never a conformity that we need! We need not to conform! What we need is to burst out into all these beautiful colors! — C. JoyBell C.

I've never believed it's really so important that you conform to the ways of the system in order to beat the system. I think that the system follows a great deal. — Saul Williams

Not everyone is allotted the chance to become a personality; most remain types, and never experience the rigor of becoming an individual. But those who do so inevitably discover that these struggles bring them into conflict with the normal life of average people and the traditional values and bourgeois conventions that they uphold. A personality is the product of a clash between two opposing forces: the urge to create a life of one's own and the insistence by the world around us that we conform. Nobody can develop a personality unless he undergoes revolutionary experiences. The extent of those experiences differs, of course, from person to person, as does the capacity to lead a life that is truly personal and unique. — Hermann Hesse

Many psychiatrists, including psychoanalysts, have painted the picture of a "normal" personality which is never too sad, too angry, or too excited. They use words like "infantile" or "neurotic" to denounce traits of types of personalities that do not conform with the conventional pattern of a "normal" individual. This kind of influence is in a way more dangerous than the older and franker forms of name-calling. Then the individual knew at least that there was some person or some doctrine which criticized him and he could fight back. But who can fight back at "science"? — Erich Fromm

Fathers never have exactly the daughters they want because they invent a notion a them that the daughters have to conform to. — Simone De Beauvoir

We ought always to conform to the manners of the greater number, and so behave as not to draw attention to ourselves. Excess either way shocks, and every man truly wise ought to attend to this in his dress as well as language, never to be affected in anything and follow without being in too great haste the changes of fashion. — Moliere

I think it's cool that you care about your heritage, but yet you don't conform. Promise me that no matter what happens, you'll never lose that feisty, impulsive side of you. — Cindi Madsen

In his youth when he was poor and had difficulty in earning his bread, he preferred to go hungry and in torn clothes rather than endanger his narrow limit of independence. He never sold himself for money or an easy life or to women or to those in power; and had thrown away a hundred times what in the worlds eyes was his advantage and happiness in order to safeguard his liberty. No prospect was more hateful and distasteful to him than that he should have to go to an office and conform to daily and yearly routine and obey others. — Hermann Hesse

People who interfered in your life always did it for your own good and I figured it out finally that what they wanted was for you to conform completely and never differ from some accepted surface standard and then dissipate the way traveling salesmen would at a convention in every stupid and boring way there was. They knew nothing of our pleasures nor how much fun it was to be damned to ourselves and never would know nor could know. Our pleasures, which were those of being in love, were as simple and still as mysterious and complicated as a simple mathematical formula that can mean all happiness or can mean the end of the world. That is the sort of happiness you should not tinker with but nearly everyone you knew tried to adjust. — Ernest Hemingway,

He was trying to accept that there were certain things that would never conform to his idea of how life should be, no matter how intensely he hoped or pretended they might. — Hanya Yanagihara

Never rebel for the sake of rebelling, but always rebel for the sake of truth. — Criss Jami

Struggle is in my heart all week. My own moral conflict never ceases. Knowing I cannot and must not simply submit to the standards imposed on me, and merely conform as "they" would like. This I am convinced is wrong - but the pressure never ceases. — Thomas Merton

That's the key, you know, confidence. I know for a fact that if you genuinely like your body, so can others. It doesn't really matter if it's short, tall, fat or thin, it just matters that you can find some things to like about it. Even if that means having a good laugh at the bits of it that wobble independently, occasionally, that's all right. It might take you a while to believe me on this one, lots of people don't because they seem to suffer from self-hatred that precludes them from imagining that a big woman could ever love herself because they don't. But I do. I know what I've got is a bit strange and difficult to love but those are the very aspects that I love the most! It's a bit like people. I've never been particularly attracted to the uniform of conventional beauty. I'm always a bit suspicious of people who feel compelled to conform. I personally like the adventure of difference. And what's beauty, anyway? — Dawn French

Some 2,600 years ago the ancient Greek poet Pindar wrote, "Become who you are by learning who you are." What he meant is the following: You are born with a particular makeup and tendencies that mark you as a piece of fate. It is who you are to the core. Some people never become who they are; they stop trusting in themselves; they conform to the tastes of others, and they end up wearing a mask that hides their true nature. If you allow yourself to learn who you really are by paying attention to that voice and force within you, then you can become what you were fated to become - an individual, a Master. — Robert Greene

Your young, sitting back thinking about your future, you feel heavily in your heart your desire to create your dream; no matter the tasks set before you. You hold that feeling; close to you, and you age. Your told to grow up, get a job and become successful in ways that will make someone else proud, whilst ignoring the ache inside yourself. Truth is, we're all raised to conform; damn it our parents were raised to conform, but does that mean you have to, too? No, than unravel that long lost dream inside yourself and start to create a life from it, you'll walk alone for a while, you will break down every comfort zone you've ever known; slowly transforming into a being without one, and you know what..? even if it's going to be hard, possibly some of the greatest hurdles of your time; one thing will feel certain- you'll never have felt so empowered in all your life. — Nikki Rowe

When Jennifer Lawrence says it's 'dumb' to go hungry to make other people happy, she's saying it with the carefree attitude of a woman who probably will never have to make that choice to conform. — Jennifer Armintrout