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...

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...

We all wear uniforms, even if we’re conforming to unconformity. People who try so hard to look different end up looking the same as all the other people who try so hard to look different.

Let’s make our own way,’ says the Mother, ‘and not in this boat.

I became one of those anonymous Americans who tries to keep his mind sharp and inquisitive while performing all the humiliating rituals of the middle class

A soft and sheltered Christianity, afraid to be lean and lone, unwilling to face the storms and brave the heights, will end up fat and foul in the cages of conformity.

On Earth, Liz was constantly occupied with studying and finding a college and a career and all those other things that the adults in her life deemed terribly important. Since she had died, everything she...

I’d trapped myself in a script…. But to be scripted at all is to be prepackaged, programmed, pinned to a page. Only the unwritten can truly live a life. So who I was, what I...

It’s weird not to be weird.

The human spirit lives on creativity and dies in conformity and routine.

I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.

You say that people are shallow and ignorant until they go out and see the world? Well I, on the other hand, went out and in comparison realized I was in pretty good standing.

Hazel, do you enjoy it?’ I paused a second, trying to figure out if my response should be calibrated to please Augustus or his parents. ‘Most of the people are really nice,’ I finally said.

What editors are obliged to appear to say that men want from women is actually what their advertisers want from women.

Conformity is a cage that confines our ability to think. It is a cage that hinders growth and deters individualism

We are not supposed to all be the same, feel the same, think the same, and believe the same. The key to continued expansion of our Universe lies in diversity, not in conformity and coercion....

We are the prisoners of conformity. To get out of this prison, education is the only door and only opportunity.

To conform is to be average.

Rebel children, I urge you, fight the turgid slick of conformity with which they seek to smother your glory.

I existed on my own terms. I was different my entire life. Some called me divergent, wild, crazy, unpredictable and unconformed—an apostate to the rules of the majority. I called myself God’s creation and found...

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.