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

“Instinct recognizes no justice.”

“So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, — What is truth? and of the affections, — What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. ... Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit.”

“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.”

“Authority, as you usually think of it, is merely the excuse the strong use to make others conform to what they want.”

“The whole of nature is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and passive.”