69 Conformity Quotes

In a world that often pressures individuals to fit into predefined molds, the concept of conformity can be both a comfort and a challenge. Striking a balance between societal expectations and personal authenticity is a journey many of us navigate daily. To help illuminate the various perspectives on this complex issue, we have curated a collection of the top 69 conformity quotes. These quotes, drawn from a diverse array of thinkers, philosophers, and cultural icons, offer deep insights and reflections on the nature of conformity and the power of individuality. Whether you seek inspiration to embrace your uniqueness or understand the dynamics of societal norms, these quotes offer valuable wisdom to guide you on your path.

1. “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

2. “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 education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.” - Doris Lessing

3. “Any fool can make a ruleAnd any fool will mind it.” - Henry David Thoreau

4. “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” - J. Krishnamurti

5. “He who joyfully marches to music rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.” - Albert Einstein

6. “Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.” - Henry David Thoreau

7. “Conform and be dull.” - James Frank Dobie

8. “Much Madness Is Divinest SenseMuch Madness is divinest Sense —To a discerning Eye —Much Sense — the starkest Madness —'Tis the MajorityIn this, as All, prevail —Assent — and you are sane —Demur — you're straightway dangerous —And handled with a Chain —” - Emily Dickinson

9. “A "Normal" person is the sort of person that might be designed by a committee. You know, "Each person puts in a pretty color and it comes out gray.” - Alan Sherman

10. “Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” - John F. Kennedy

11. “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 regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species, bent on ensuring his salvation, security, and sanity. ” - Thomas Szasz

12. “If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good.” - Thomas J. Watson

13. “It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.” - Eric Hoffer

14. “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 is an entire world that each one carries within him, an unknown world that is born and dies in silence! What solitudes all these human bodies are!” - Alfred De Musset

15. “That is the true challenge--to work within a narrow confine. To accept what you cannot have; that from which you cannot deviate.” - Whitney Otto

16. “The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it's a job.Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.I call the process of doing your art 'the work.' It's possible to have a job and do the work, too. In fact, that's how you become a linchpin.The job is not the work.” - Seth Godin

17. “Be neither a conformist or a rebel, for they are really the same thing. Find your own path, and stay on it” - Paul Vixie

18. “Whatever question arose, a swarm of these drones, without having finished their buzzing on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum drowned and obscured the voices of those who were disputing honestly.” - Leo Tolstoy

19. “[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. I can only find it within.” - Charles Taylor

20. “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 apps, they're zombies.” - Meg Cabot

21. “One can often recognize herd animals by their tendency to carry bibles.” - Allen Wheelis

22. “Or about how when you're a child, to stop you from following the crowd you're assaulted with the line "If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?" but when you're an adult and to be different is suddenly a crime, people seem to be saying, "Hey. Everyone else is jumping off a bridge. Why aren't you?” - Steve Toltz

23. “All the heroes of tomorrow are the heretics of today.” - Yip Harburg

24. “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.” - Vance Havner

25. “As much as I live I shall not imitate them or hate myself for being different to them” - Orhan Pamuk

26. “Rebel children, I urge you, fight the turgid slick of conformity with which they seek to smother your glory.” - Russell Brand

27. “The Master said of Gong Yechang, “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)” - Confucius

28. “What puzzled me was why I seemed to be so troubled by all these irregularities and exceptions to major rules while others blithely marched ahead.” - Catherine Gildiner

29. “[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 superior to mine? I do not mean that they choose what is customary in preference to what suits their own inclinations. It does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things that are commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature they have no nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own.” - John Stuart Mill

30. “No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

31. “We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything, than when we are at play.” - Charles Schaefer

32. “It's weird not to be weird.” - John Lennon

33. “You laugh at me because I'm different, I laugh at you because you're all the same.” - Jonathan Davis

34. “We must beware of yielding to the pressure of a spirit of cowardly conformity which proclaims itself everybody's friend in the hope that everybody will obligingly return the compliment.” - Antonin Sertillanges

35. “The great safeguard of society and of domestic life was, that opinions were not acted on. Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.” - George Eliot

36. “Don't get caught up in fashion games. These kids probably think we're old, nark conformists or something, but really, they're just conforming in their own ways. They're conforming to nonconformity.” - Richelle Mead

37. “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 lies hope.” - Howard Zinn

38. “The urge to shout filthy words at the top of his voice was as strong as ever.” - George Orwell

39. “Evil would always come to me disguised in systems and dignified by law.” - Pat Conroy

40. “One must do no violence to nature, nor model it in conformity to any blindly formed chimera.” - Janos Bolyai

41. “Sophistication is upscale conformity.” - James Richardson

42. “I would rather be an artist than a leader. Ironically, a leader has to follow the rules.” - Criss Jami

43. “We laugh at sheep because sheep just follow the one in front. We humans have out-sheeped the sheep, because at least the sheep need a sheep dog to keep them in line. Humans keep each other in line. And they do it by ridiculing or condemning anyone who commits the crime, and that’s what it’s become, of being different.” - David Icke

44. “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.” - Varg Vikernes

45. “One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be, rather than being yourself.” - Shannon L. Alder

46. “This is the enemy, what is irreversible, what has already reached the farthest of places. There is no going back. They can bomb bus-loads of tourists, burn the American flag, but they are not shooting the enemy. It is already with them, inside them, what makes them resentful, defensive, what makes them no longer confident of their vision of the world.” - Leila Aboulela

47. “Conformity—the natural instinct to passively yield to that vague something recognized as authority.” - Mark Twain

48. “I’ll be washed and ironed. I’ll be washed and ironed and starched.” - Sherwood Anderson

49. “We are not here to match and homogenize and agree on every point. One size of spirituality does not fit all. We are here to be our divine selves, boldly, passionately, respectfully, to the absolute best of our ability — and this, this is more than enough.” - sera break

50. “There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn’t exist.” - Fernando Pessoa

51. “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 get down to the nitty-gritty, it's getting' to be old and young - not the age, but the way of thinking. Old and new, actually... because there's so many even older people that took half their lives to reach a certain point that little kids understand now.” - Jimi Hendrix

52. “What editors are obliged to appear to say that men want from women is actually what their advertisers want from women.” - Naomi Wolf

53. “I often felt the girls' speech was interchangeable, without any individuality whatsoever, a kind of herd-speak they had all agreed upon.” - Siri Hustvedt

54. “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 the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.” - H.L. Mencken

55. “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it's conformity.” - Rollo May

56. “A man's shortcomings are taken from his epoch; his virtues and greatness belong to himself.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

57. “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.” - H. Beam Piper

58. “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.” - Shannon Alder

59. “Christians should be cultural and intellectual thermostats, exulting in opposition, iconoclasm,and balancing insights.” - Gene Edward Veith Jr.

60. “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 was, had to be unwritten.” - David James Duncan

61. “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 the flick of a switch, taught to keep our heads down and our elbows in and shut off our minds and shut off our sex. We learn we can't even piss when we have to. That's how we learn to be plastic and dumb.” - Marge Piercy

62. “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. Conventionality is the death of creation.” - Anthon St. Maarten

63. “It then becomes necessary to stop short and make a choice: Either/Or. Either one drifts with their absurd system of ideas, believing that this is the human community. Or one dissents totally from their system of ideas and stands as a lonely human being. (But luckily one notices that the others are in the same crisis and making the same choices.)” - Paul Goodman

64. “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 followers who conform without thinking things through, they are often taken at face value. The persistent minority forces the others to process the relevant information more mindfully. Research shows that the deciscions of a group as a whole are more thoughtful and creative when there is minority dissent than when it is absent.” - Philip G. Zimbardo

65. “With over a millennia of heritage behind them, each with their own glimpse of empire and some pinnacle of human expression (a Sistine Chapel or Götterdämmerung), now they were satisfied to express their individuality through which Rogers they preferred at the Saturday matinee: Ginger or Roy or Buck. America may be the land of opportunity, but in New York it's the shot at conformity that pulls them through the door.” - Amor Towles

66. “One of the useful things about age is realizing conventional wisdom is often simply inertia with a candy coating of conformity.” - Anna Quindlen

67. “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 disagree ...” - Craig E. Johnson

68. “It occurred to the man that the biggest problem with this staid world was the overwhelming demand for conformity. Everything was so eerily definitive: assent to the mandates of society would see you on the rise, but dissent was a steady downward path.” - Django Wylie

69. “Since the war, we're the only intelligent species left in the universe, therefore we think everything in this universe has to conform to our paradigm of what makes sense. Do you have any idea how arrogant that view is and on how little of this universe we base it?” - Robert Buettner