Nonconformist Quotes & Sayings

The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific and religious freedom have always been nonconformists. — Martin Luther King Jr.

People like us are dead to society unless we're pretentious, tell people what they want to hear, take off our clothes, or pretend to be like them. — Donna Lynn Hope

When I was in fourth grade, we were learning vocabulary words, and the word nonconformist came up. The teacher said, "It's somebody who whatever everybody is doing, they do the opposite." I remember raising my hand and saying, "Mrs. Christiansen, I would like to be a nonconformist." — Nick Offerman

Her way of being religious was as nonconformist as her nonreligious life had been. She was skeptical about many of the practices of the institutional church. She preferred to trust in the personal relationship she had grown to experience with God. This relationship transformed her ability to be in community and enabled her to see the essence of those around her: "The longer I live, the more I see God at work in people who don't have the slightest interest in religion and never read the Bible and wouldn't know what to do if they were persuaded to go inside a church."

For Dorothy [Day], the bread broken at Mass wasn't any more holy than the bread broken at shelters and soup kitchens. Church didn't happen in a building. It happened in the way people related to each other. Christ wasn't any more present in the liturgy than he was when on person listened with compassion to the pain of another. — Helen LaKelly Hunt

Hegel believed that progress is ultimately furthered by the person who is out of step with the majority. Only this person, the genuine nonconformist, really experiences the constraints on freedom. Only this person is in the position of questioning the prevailing understandings of happiness. For — Stephen Eric Bronner

I didn't like having to explain to them, so I just shut up, smoked a cigarette, and looked at the sea. — Albert Camus

Religion invents a problem where none exists by describing the wicked as also made in the image of god and the sexually nonconformist as existing in a state of incurable mortal sin that can incidentally cause floods and earthquakes. — Christopher Hitchens

Too often an institution serves to bless the majority opinion. Today when too many move to the rhythmic beat of the status quo, whoever would be a Christian must be a nonconformist. — Martin Luther King Jr.

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

Like many nonconformist and beat generation writers, William S. Burroughs takes the outcasts of society as his theme. — William S. Burroughs

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

The nonconformist here may be "beat down" by life but still has a beauty in his or her longing for freedom and for an awakening of the mind. — William S. Burroughs

To be a man is to be a nonconformist. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We see ourselves as nonconformist, but I think all of this is creating a more conformist, conservative age. — Jon Ronson

You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone — Eric Hoffer

In my heart I'm independent, a bit of a rebel, a nonconformist. — Nicole Kidman

The nonconformist and the rebel say all manner of unanswerable things against the existing republic, but discover to our sense no plan of house or state of their own. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever his elders told him to do, he did. They told him to look before he leaped, and he always looked before he leaped. They told him never to put off until the next day what he could do the day before, and he never did. He was told to honor his father and his mother, and he honored his father and his mother. He was told that he should not kill, and he did not kill, until he got into the Army. Then he was told to kill, and he killed. He turned the other cheek on every occasion and always did unto others exactly as he would have had others do unto him. When he gave to charity, his left hand never knew what his right hand was doing. He never once took the name of the Lord his God in vain, committed adultery or coveted his neighbor's ass. In fact, he loved his neighbor and never even bore false witness against him. Major Major's elders disliked him because he was such a flagrant nonconformist. — Joseph Heller

The first step in freeing yourself from social restrictions is the realization that there is no such thing as a safe code of conduct - one that would earn everyone's approval. Your actions can always be condemned by someone - for being too bold or too apathetic, for being too conformist or too nonconformist, for being too liberal or too conservative. So it's necessary to decide whose approval is important to you. — Harry Browne

Confession is not all about telling your bad deeds to the public, but being proud of the bad things you have done so far. — Michael Bassey Johnson

It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed. — Albert Einstein

I'd been a child during the 1960s when women burned their bras and hundreds of thousands gathered in protests against the Vietnam War. As a climber, I've felt connected to a similar nonconformist culture, one opposed to society's increasing materialism, pollution and corruption. Our approach to the rock - clean, traditional climbing, with the least dependence on equipment - was an extension of this ethical viewpoint. — Lynn Hill

If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity. — Bill Vaughan

Tell how it is normal to be very comfortable on the outside but very uncomfortable on the inside. Tell how funny it all is. But tell a little something else, too. What can it hurt? Tell a little something else--about how you can be a nonconformist and about how you can be an outsider. And tell how you are entitled to a little privacy. But for goodness' sake, say all that very softly. — E.L. Konigsburg

Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else? — James Thurber

I wonder in what way I would function as a person, in a society without ever attending school. I'd be myself. — J.R. Rim

One radical free spirit nonconformist is pretty much like another. — George Will

When people look at me, they automatically assume I'm dark and weird. Why can't they see the truth? I'm just a girl, trying to find my place in the world. — Gena Showalter

He had some measure of the infuriating trait that causes a young man to be a nonconformist for its own sake and found that the surest way to shock most people, in those days, was to believe that some kinds of behavior were bad and others good, and that it was reasonable to live one's life accordingly. — Neal Stephenson

Our dourest parsons, who followed the nonconformist fashion of long extemporary prayers, always seemed to me to be bent on bullying God. — J.B. Priestley

The poet, the artist, the sleuth - whoever sharpens our perception tends to be antisocial; rarely "well-adjusted", he cannot go along with currents and trends. A strange bond often exists between antisocial types in their power to see environments as they really are. This need to interface, to confront environments with a certain antisocial power is manifest in the famous story "The Emperor's New Clothes". — Marshall McLuhan

I grew up in New York City in Greenwich Village and had parents who were somewhat bohemian so I was always on the nonconformist side of the equation. — Anne Waldman

Scratch me and you will find the Nonconformist. — Austen Chamberlain

Imagine what it must be like for teenagers who don't feel they have room to breathe in their own homes. If you are a parent reading this book, you care about your child. If she is quirky, unusual, or nonconformist, ask yourself whether you are doing everything you can to nurture her unusual interests, style, or skills, or whether instead you are directly or subtly pushing her to hide them. — Alexandra Robbins

My birth sign is Scorpio and they eat themselves up and burn themselves out. I swing between happiness and misery. I am part prude and part nonconformist. I say what I think and I don't pretend, and I am prepared to accept the consequences of my actions. — Vivien Leigh

And one of our vocabulary words was nonconformist. I just dug that word. I heard the explanation, the definition, and I felt like I had just learned about a new hero in a kick-ass Marvel comic book. — Nick Offerman

The whole attempt to advance the kind of consumer society that depends for its growth on the ceaseless stimulation of unlimited covetousness among the rich, while the poor majority rot in their poverty-this is surely something against which a Christian should be a nonconformist. — Lesslie Newbigin

Today and tomorrow is an illusion, days are all joined together, and if you are waiting for your time, you are wasting your time. — Michael Bassey Johnson

In his essay 'Self-Reliance' Emerson wrote, 'Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.' The Apostle Paul reminds us that whoso would be a Christian must also be a a nonconformist. Any Christian who blindly accepts the opinions of the majority and in fear and timidity follows a path of expediency and social approval is a mental and spiritual slave. — Martin Luther King Jr.