Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [61-80] of 83 Conformity quotesConformity QuotesConformity Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes According to Gestapo records…they had little need to engage in direct spying on the citizens since the citizens themselves were more than willing to do their spying for them.~ Kort E. Patterson Every child in America who enters school at the age of five is mentally ill, because he comes to school with an allegiance toward our elected officials, toward our founding fathers, toward our institutions, toward the preservation of this form of government that we have. Patriotism, nationalism, and sovereignty, all that proves that children are sick because a truly well individual is one who has rejected all of those things, and is truly the international child of the future.~ Dr. Chester Pierce There is no inherent misdirection in holding unorthodox views. Indeed, the autonomous individual, free from compulsive conformance and unquestioned assumptions, is likely to be unorthodox... They stimulate the climate of controversy without which political democracy becomes an empty formalism.~ Snell Putney There are many well-meaning people today who work at placing an economic floor beneath all of us so that no one shall exist below a certain level or standard of living, and certainly we don't quarrel with this. But look more closely and you may find that all too often these well-meaning people are building a ceiling above which no one shall be permitted to climb and between the two are pressing us all into conformity, into a mold of standardized mediocrity.~ Ronald Reagan The idea that men are created free and equal is both true and misleading: men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other.~ David Reisman Give me control over a man's economic actions, and hence over his means of survival, and except for a few occasional heroes, I'll promise to deliver to you men who think and write and behave as I want them to.~ Benjamin A. Rooge There is no subjugation so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom for in that way one captures volition itself.~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau The most absolute authority is that which penetrates into a man’s innermost being and concerns itself no less with his will than with his actions.~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau What's the difference between a bright, inquisitive five-year-old, and a dull, stupid nineteen-year-old? Fourteen years of the British educational system.~ Bertrand Russell The State…has had a vested interest in promoting attitudes that would tend to make us skeptical of our own abilities, fearful of the motives of others, and emotionally dependent upon external authorities for purpose and direction in our lives.~ Butler D. Shaffer Every great historic change has been based on nonconformity, has been bought either with the blood or with the reputation of nonconformists.~ Ben Shahn [A]nd obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men and of the human frame, A mechanized automaton.~ Percy Bysshe Shelley Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame, A mechanized automaton.~ Percy Bysshe Shelley The difference between a politician and a pickpocket is that the pickpocket doesn't get indignant when you tell him to keep his hands to himself.~ Joseph Sobran Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.~ Joseph Sobran Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to think, and this they consider freedom.~ Oswald Spengler Does it not seem a vast waste of valuable human material that the pioneers of thought, those who by their genius dare to clear unknown paths in the arts and sciences and in government, should have to conform to the dictates of that non-creative, slow-moving mass, the majority? An appeal to the majority is a resort to force and not an appeal to intelligence; the majority is always ignorant, and by increasing the majority we multiply ignorance. The majority is incapable of initiative, its attitude being one of opposition toward everything that is new. If it had been left to the majority, the world would never have had the steamboat, the railroad, the telegraph, or any of the conveniences of modern life.~ Charles T. Sprading If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.~ Henry David Thoreau The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.~ Henry David Thoreau It is our nature to conform; it is a force which not many people can successfully resist. What is its seat? The inborn requirement of self-approval.~ Mark Twain Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print