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...

So you’re a little weird? Work it! A little different? OWN it! Better to be a nerd than one of the herd!

To hear how much of a great human being you were — even if you really weren’t — open your ears at your funeral.

Popularity gives you power only over people who care about being popular. Ostracism gives you power only over those who fear being ostracized.

[E]ach of our voices has something unique to say. Not only should I not mold my life to the demands of external conformity; I can’t even find the model by which to live outside myself....

Convention (is) so often a mask for injustice.

I think one of the problems [with raising intelligent children] is compulsory schooling…and that children are sitting there and they are taught and told what to believe. They are passive from the very beginning, and...

I found it hateful, yet I wanted to be part of it.

The problem with this generation is they are so quick to define who they are in the process of searching. It is their need for immediate acceptance that keeps them from exploring further.

The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge...

But human beings are not machines, and however powerful the pressure to conform, they sometimes are so moved by what they see as injustice that they dare to declare their independence. In that historical possibility...

One lesson we learn early, that in spite of seeming difference, men are all of one pattern. We readily assume this with our mates, and are disappointed and angry if we find that we are...

Being yourself in a world which wants you to be someone else is the highest possible attainment.

Any fool can do something cool and look cool, but it takes skill to make something uncool cool again.

There is a time in a boy’s life when the sweetness is pounded out of him; and tenderness, and the ability to show what he feels, is gone.

If unconventional ideas = sperm, then public opinion = abortion.

Insecurity of the spirit demands completeness elsewhere.

Conformity is a problem for many small groups. Members put a higher priority on cohesion than on coming up with a well-reasoned choice. They pressure dissenters, shield themselves from negative feedback, keep silent when they...

Any fool can make a ruleAnd any fool will mind it.

[People] ask themselves, what is suitable for my position? What is usually done by persons of my station and percuniary circumstances? Or (worse still) what is usually done by persons of a station and circumstances...

The essence of the Christian life is not attending meetings or even praying and fasting. The essence of the Christian life is looking intently for bits of God in everything and everyone, everyday, so that...

God never uses one approach to the get his job done in the world. Each soul has its own way of being reached. He has put inside of each of us an unique song, that...

I do not see the point in dressing and acting and speaking in a way that makes you feel more comfortable and me feel less comfortable.

make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances...

As much as I live I shall not imitate them or hate myself for being different to them

The virtue in most request is conformity.

The common person fears to think beyond the common.

He is marriageable. Although he was once imprisoned and branded as a criminal, he was in fact innocent of any crime.” The Master gave him his daughter in marriage.(Analects 5.1)

one-size-fits-all”!

Opinions of the masses kill the ‘extra’ in an ‘extraordinary’ idea.

Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull,...

If you conform, you can never reform.