#conformity

The urge to shout filthy words at the top of his voice was as strong as ever. ↗

— George Orwell

#conformity #control #profanity #sexuality #conformity

It is simply wrong to begin with a theme, symbol or other abstract unifying agent, and then try to force characters and events to conform to it. ↗

— Thomas Pynchon

#conformity

perhaps, if one wishes to remain an individual in the midst of the teeming multitudes, one must make oneself grotesque. ↗

— Salman Rushdie

#individualism #conformity

If a man does not keep pace with his companion, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#individuality #conformity

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

— Criss Jami

#cool #coolness #fool #independence #individuality

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

#conformity #declaration-of-independence #hope #individuality #non-conformity

At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal's behavior is embedded and by which it is secured. Such security, like paradise, is closed to man forever; man has to make choices. In addition to this, however, man has suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people tell him to do (totalitarianism). ↗

— Viktor E. Frankl

#conformity