#conform

We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything, than when we are at play. ↗

— Charles Schaefer

#freedom #fun #maturity #orthodoxy #play

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

#conformity #conventionality #creation #diversity #expansion

Seeds have the power to preserve species, to enhance cultural as well as genetic diversity, to counter economic monopoly and to check the advance of conformity on all its many fronts. ↗

— Michael Pollan

#garden #gardening #nature #nonconformity #preservation

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

#conviction #life

ROBERT ROTH: Going against the tide, no matter how gracefully, will beat you up after a while — all artists know this. ↗

— Greg Prato

#music

I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself. ↗

— Rita Mae Brown

#individuality #self-love #self-respect #love

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#creativity #different #individuality #non-conformist #art

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

— Mark Twain

#nature

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

#comfort #conformity #religion #religion

My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. "Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?" they asked me the other day. I told them this story: In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me...I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you...you're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest." So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day. ↗

— Tom Waits

#individuality #music #musician #non-conformity #humor