CONFORMITY

Related States & Conditions | Syntonic | Dystonic

As to the roaming of sages,
They move in utter emptiness,
Let their minds meander in the great nothingness;
They run beyond convention
And go through where there is no gateway.
They listen to the soundless
And look at the formless,
They are not constrained by society
And not bound to its customs.
Laozi
570-490 BCE, Chinese Philosopher, Founder of Daoism

Conventional thinking is the ruin of our souls,
something borrowed which we mistake as our own.
Ignorance is better than this; clutch at madness instead.
Rumi
1207-1273, Afghani-Turkish Sufi Mystic, Poet
"To Clutch at Madness," Mathnawi II, 2327, The Pocket Rumi Reader , Kabir Helminski, ed., 2001

Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.
Montaigne
1533-1592, French Essayist, Moralist

I believe more follies are committed out of complaisance to the world, than in following our own inclinations.
Mary Wortley Montague
1689-1762, English Writer
The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague , Vol. I

Take the course opposite to custom and you will do well.
Jean Rousseau
1712-1778, Swiss-French Philosopher, Educator, Essayist

Not choice
But habit rules the unreflecting herd.
William Wordsworth
1770-1850, English Lyrical Poet

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves to be like other people.
Arthur Schopenhauer
1788-1860, German Philosopher

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist, Philosopher

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Emerson

Universities are of course hostile to geniuses, which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries persecute youthful saints.
Emerson

The perpetual obstacle to human advancement is custom.
John Stuart Mill
1806-1873, English Philosopher, Economist

How glorious it is – and also how painful – to be an exception.
Alfred de Musset
1810-1857, French Poet

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
Thoreau
1817-1862, American Essayist, Social Critic

Resist much. Obey little.
Walt Whitman
1819-1892, American Poet, Writer

We are half ruined by conformity; but we should be wholly ruined without it.
Charles Warner
1829-1900, American Editor, Essayist
My Summer in a Garden

The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.
Mark Twain
1835-1910, American Writer, Humorist, Journalist

Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than what we suspect of what we think.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
1841-1935, American Jurist, Writer

Hell, there are no rules here – we're trying to accomplish something.
Thomas Edison
1847-1931, American Inventor, Industrialist

Less than 15 percent of people do any original thinking on any subject. The greatest torture in the world for most people is to think.
Luther Burbank
1849-1926, American Botanist, Inventor

When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right.
Eugene Debs
1855-1926, American Labor Leader

What we call "morals" is simply blind obedience to words of command.
Havelock Ellis
1859-1939, English Physician, Sexologist, Essayist

People dare not – they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry – I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don't find themselves at all. I hate all this moral agoraphobia – it's the worst kind of cowardice. You can't create something without being alone.
André Gide
1869-1951, French Writer, Critic, Dramatist, Poet, 1947 Nobel Laureate
The Immoralist

Prophets, mystics, poets, scientific discoverers are men whose lives are dominated by a vision; they are essentially solitary men … whose thoughts and emotions are not subject to the dominion of the herd.
Bertrand Russell
1872-1970, English Philosopher, Mathematician, Essayist, Social Reformer, 1951 Nobel Laureate

It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.
G. H. Hardy
1877-1947, English Mathematician, Writer

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.
Albert Einstein
1879-1955, German/American Mathematical Physicist, 1921 Nobel Laureate

Few are those who think with their own minds and feel with their own hearts.
Einstein

Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
H. L. Mencken
1880-1956, American Writer, Critic, Philologist, Satirist
Prejudices: Third Series

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness. He alone lives, while other people, slaves of ceremony, let life slip past them in a kind of dream. 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, callous, and indifferent.
Virginia Woolf
1882-1941, English Writer, Critic
The Common Reader , First Series

Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much.
Walter Lippmann
1889-1974, American Journalist

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.
Christopher Morley
1890-1957, American Writer, Journalist, Editor

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.
Archibald MacLeish
1892-1982, American Poet

Few men who have liberated themselves from the fear of God and the fear of death are yet able to liberate themselves from the fear of man. Consciously or unconsciously, we are all actors in this life playing to the audience in a part and style approved by them.
Lin Yutang
1895-1976, Chinese Writer, Dramatist, Translator
The Importance of Living , 1937

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
Adlai Stevenson
1900-1965, American Lawyer, Statesman, UN Diplomat
Speech, 1952

Modern capitalism needs men who cooperate smoothly and in large numbers; who want to consume more and more; and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated … what is the outcome? Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow man and from nature.
Erich Fromm
1900-1980, German/American Psychoanalyst, Writer

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
Eric Hoffer
1902-1983, American Writer, Philosopher, Longshoreman
The Passionate State of Mind, And Other Essays , 1955

Heresy is another word for freedom of thought.
Graham Greene
1904-1991, English Writer, Dramatist

If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be so much a representative of your culture that you are a victim of it.
S. I. Hayakawa
1906-1992, Japanese-American Educator

Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime.
Jacob Bronowski
1908-1974, British Scientist, Writer
"The Sense of Human Dignity," in Science and Human Values , 1961

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
John Galbraith
1908-, American Diplomat, Economist, Writer

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 Riesman
1909-2002, American Sociologist

If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.
Katherine Hepburn
1909-2003, American Actress

Nobody seems to realize that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
Albert Camus
1913-1960, Algerian-French Writer, Essayist, Dramatist, 1957 Nobel Laureate

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of "crackpot" than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost.
Thomas J. Watson, Jr.
1914-1993, American Executive, Diplomat

People are constantly trying to use you to help them create the particular illusions by which they live. This is particularly true of the collective illusions which sometimes are accepted as ideologies. You must renounce and sacrifice the approval that is only a bribe enlisting your support of a collective illusion. You must not allow yourself to be represented as someone in whom a few of the favorite daydreams of the public have come true. You must be willing, if necessary, to become a disturbing and therefore an undesired person, one who is not wanted because he upsets the general dream.
Thomas Merton
1915-1968, American Trappist Monk, Writer
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander , 1966

It is very nearly impossible … to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
James Baldwin
1924-1987, African-American Writer, Dramatist, Poet, Civil Rights Activist

Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity.
Maya Angelou
1928-, African-American Writer, Poet, Dramatist

The greatest service that you can do mankind is to expose hypocrisy, question authority, and blow the whistle … If you really want to make a difference, stand up for an unpopular cause.
Ed Asner
1929-, American Television Actor
in Fast Company , 1999 December

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
1929-1968, African-American Civil Rights Leader, Cleric, 1964 Nobel Laureate

One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
King

Most people conform in exchange for the world's acceptance. If we already feel at home in the world, deeply related and comfortable, if we are unafraid, we do not have to strike this kind of bargain.
Marilyn Ferguson
1938-, American Writer, Mind Researcher
The Aquarian Conspiracy , 1980

I don't give a damn what others say. It's okay to color outside of the lines.
Jimi Hendrix
1942-1970, African-American Rock Singer, Songwriter, Guitarist

The race goes to the labile personalities, the ones who mix the colors of the socks they put on in the morning and revel in change and ambiguity.
Tom Peters
1942-, American Management Consultant
Tom Peters Seminar

Create a vision and never let the environment, other people's beliefs, or the limits of what has been done in the past shape your decisions. Ignore conventional wisdom.
Anthony Robbins
1960-, American Writer, Motivational Speaker

Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.
Jodi Foster
1962-, American Actress

The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.
- Alan Ashley-Pitt

The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.
- Joe Aucis

Go your own way. Question everything. Accept nothing. Accept no dogma, no cant. There are too many people walking around thinking they're sacred cows, and they're only half right.
- Rosie Dimanno

You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note.
- Doug Floyd

Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.
- Angela Monet

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them. Disagree with them. Glorify, or villify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
- Think Different Apple

Norms are things that are always perceived, but never achieved.
- Phillip A. Trella

New ideas … are not born in a conforming environment.
- Roger von Oech
American Writer

Be not so bigoted to any custom as to worship it at the expense of truth.
- Johann Georg von Zimmerman

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Wisdom for The Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, © 2004