Quotes & Sayings About Nonconformists

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

We need to recapture the gospel glow of the early Christians who were nonconformists in the truest sense of the word ... Their powerful gospel put an end to such barbaric evils as infanticide and bloody gladiatorial contests. Finally, they captured the Roman Empire for Jesus Christ. — 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

Yes, I see the Church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists. — Martin Luther

The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood. — Martin Luther King Jr.

She put her cup down and sighed again with pleasure. "I can't think how the Nonconformists have failed to discover coffee."
"Discover it?"
"Yes. As a snare. It does far more for one than drink. And yet no one preaches about it, or signs pledges about it. Five mouthfuls and the world looks rosy. — Josephine Tey

The scriptures present a God who delights in genocide, rape, slavery, and the execution of nonconformists, and for millennia those writings were used to rationalize the massacre of infidels, the ownership of women, the beating of children, dominion over animals, and the persecution of heretics and homosexuals. Humanitarian reforms such as the elimination of cruel punishment, the dissemination of empathy-inducing novels, and the abolition of slavery were met with fierce opposition in their time by ecclesiastical authorities and their apologists. The elevation of parochial values to the realm of the sacred is a license to dismiss other people's interests, and an imperative to reject the possibility of compromise. — Steven Pinker

By opening our lives to God in Christ, we become new creatures. This experience, which Jesus spoke of as the new birth, is essential if we are to be transformed nonconformists ... Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit. — Martin Luther King Jr.

These unwritten amenities have been in part responsible for giving our people the feeling of independence and self-confidence, the feeling of creativity. These amenities have dignified the right of dissent and have honored the right to be nonconformists and the right to defy submissiveness. They have encouraged lives of high spirits rather than hushed, suffocating silence. — William O. Douglas

Nonconformists aren't just going against the grain; they're going against the brain. Either their brains aren't taking the easy way out to begin with, or in standing apart from their peers, these students are standing up to their biology. — Alexandra Robbins

I perceive that it is far more practical to begin at the beginning and discuss theories. I see that the men who killed each other about the orthodoxy of the Homoousion were far more sensible than the people who are quarrelling about the Education Act. For the Christian dogmatists were trying to establish a reign of holiness, and trying to get defined, first of all, what was really holy. But our modern educationists are trying to bring about a religious liberty without attempting to settle what is religion or what is liberty. If the old priests forced a statement on mankind, at least they previously took some trouble to make it lucid. It has been left for the modern mobs of Anglicans and Nonconformists to persecute for a doctrine without even stating it. — G.K. Chesterton

Sybarites bathe in wine, and Nonconformists drink water; — G.K. Chesterton

We as Christians have a mandate to be nonconformists. — Martin Luther King Jr.

To some extent, people who are insane are nonconformists, and society and their family wish they would live what appear to be useful lives. — John Forbes Nash Jr.

The business community wants remarkable advertising, but turns a cold shoulder to the kind of people who can produce it. That is why most advertisements are so infernally dull ... our business needs massive transfusions of talent. And talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels. — David Ogilvy

The apostle Paul urges Christians everywhere in all ages to be nonconformists as far as the world system is concerned. We are not to conform. A true Christian, living an obedient life, is a constant rebuke to those who accept the
moral standards of this world. — Billy Graham

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

What a country, and what a culture, when the liberals cry before they are hurt, and the reactionaries pose as brave nonconformists, while the radicals make a fetish of their own jokey irrelevance. — Christopher Hitchens

Every great historic change has been based on nonconformity, has been bought either with the blood or with the reputation of nonconformists. — Ben Shahn

Writing, when all is said and done, is an attempt to understand one's own circumstance and to clarify the confusion of existence, including insecurities that do not torment normal people, only chronic nonconformists, many of whom end up as writers after having failed in other undertakings. — Isabel Allende

They praise these tiny indie bands, but if a band finally gets mainstream success, the same people who praised them attack them for 'selling out.' People often play at being nonconformists to mask their own feelings of not fitting in. — Kyle Baker

Conformity may give you a quiet life; it may even bring you to a University Chair. But all change in history, all advance, comes from the nonconformists. If there had been no trouble-makers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves. — A.J.P. Taylor

Rescuers tended to be decisive, fast-thinking, risk-taking, independent, adventurous, openhearted, rebellious, and unusually flexible - able to switch plans, abandon habits, or change ingrained routines at a moment's notice. They tended to be nonconformists, and though many rescuers held solemn principles worth dying for, they didn't regard themselves as heroic. — Diane Ackerman

Mavericks are nonconformists. They pride themselves on going it alone. — Jacqueline Leo