I would rather be an artist than a leader. Ironically, a leader has to follow the rules.

A man’s shortcomings are taken from his epoch; his virtues and greatness belong to himself.

Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: ‘You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of...

All the heroes of tomorrow are the heretics of today.

In addition to conformity as a way to relieve the anxiety springing from separateness, another factor of contemporary life must be considered: the role of the work routine and the pleasure routine. Man becomes a...

An artist who conforms to conventional ideas is nothing but a mere charlatan.

The thing I’ve never understood about dancing till now is that it only looks stupid when you’re on the outside, watching other people do it. When you’re part of the crowd, moving along with everyone...

Alas, everything that men say to one another is alike; the ideas they exchange are almost always the same, in their conversation. But inside all those isolated machines, what hidden recesses, what secret compartments! It...

If what you create seems to turn out much stranger than who you are as a person, it’s probably because your heart is talking.

It’s time for a new National Anthem. America is divided into two definite divisions. The easy thing to cop out with is sayin’ black and white. You can see a black person. But now to...

Two reasons why people hate and/or fight change: (1) People fear the unknown; and (2) There are always people profiting from how things are.

Majority decisions tend to be made without engaging the systematic thought and critical thinking skills of the individuals in the group. Given the force of the group’s normative power to shape the opinions of the...

Nowadays, ads don’t just sell a product. They sell an attitude! Look at this one! Here’s a cool guy saying nobody tells him what to do. He does whatever he wants and he buys this...

It is a brave thing to have courage to be an individual; it is also, perhaps, a lonely thing. But it is better than not being an individual, which is to be nobody at all.

…all these things were part of the business of dreams. He had learned not to laugh at the advertisements offering to teach writing, cartooning, engineering, to add inches to the biceps and to develop the...

Am I corrupted if I believe that the people who think alike are more admirable and estimable than those who think for themselves? If no one thought differently, then where would our innovations come from?...

Joining a sub-culture, any sub-culture, for whatever reason, is as I see it never a legitimate self-expression. It is always a result of sheep mentality; a wish to belong somewhere.

It was a bland, tranquilized, life-adjusted, group-integrated sort of face — the face turned out in thousands of copies every year by the educational production lines on Terra.

A prison becomes a home when you have the key.

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

This is the history of governments, – one man does something which is to bind another. A man who cannot be acquainted with me, taxes me; looking from afar at me, ordains that a part...

Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.

Society tells me to follow my own truth, but I don’t let society tell me what to do. If you need someone to tell you that, chances are you’re part of the crowd that will...

College: two hundred people reading the same book. An obvious mistake. Two hundred people can read two hundred books.

He who fails to achieve a dream set by himself is more honorable than he who succeeds in achieving a dream set by his society.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything, than when we are at play.

No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.

Truth recognizes truth, just as a man with real talent is the first to recognize another with real talent. Likewise, superficiality attracts others with an artificial surface. Only the superficial applaud the superficial. A man...

Conformity begins the moment you ignore how you feel for acceptance.

Schools train you to be ignorant with style […] they prepare you to be a usable victim for a military industrial complex that needs manpower. As long as you’re just smart enough to do a...

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

When students cheat on exams it’s because our school system values grades more than students value learning.

None believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed. Ah me! no man goeth alone. All men go in flocks to this saint or that poet, avoiding...

We conform to pain until we don’t notice it anymore; it’s what you call — numb — and it tragically blots out our pleasure too.

Most people want so desperately to be an individual yet are so easily shaped by the media.

The societies kids naturally form are tribal. Gangs, clubs, packs. But we’re herded into schools and terrified into behaving. Taught how we’re supposed to pretend to be, taught to parrot all kinds of nonsense at...

Somebody is born. Somebody goes to school. Somebody learns to conform. Somebody types a CV. Somebody gets a job. Somebody follows orders. Somebody gets a golden watch. And then, eventually, Somebody dies. And, a Nobody...

For the first time, a whole generation had the economic & educational opportunity to turn their backs on the dead end factory jobs of their parents, who, traumatized by two world wars, had responded by...

If I have forfeited the ability to wonder so as not to offend the tenets of the culture, and if I have sacrificed warm dreams on the cold altar of conformity, it is likely because...

It’s hard being pissed with a nice car and a good job. Fed up on filet medallions and swimming in chilled martinis. We know what we think and our life here is our reward for...

Wild birds will kill exotic ones: the budgies and the lovebirds and the yellow canaries– escaped from their cages and hoping to get a taste of the sky — usually end up back on the...

The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to...

One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be, rather than being yourself.

The marriage of reason and nightmare that dominated the 20th century has given birth to an ever more ambiguous world. Across the communications landscape move the spectres of sinister technologies and the dreams that money...

Remember, the opposite of bravery is not cowardice, but conformity.

However, because they have no actual interests of their own (or if they do, they squelch them in order to fit in) and merely pursue those that they think will look best on their college...

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will to doubt can be just as powerfully sapped by an internal sense that societal conventions must...