Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.
Lucius Annaeus SenecaWhen you put on a uniform, there are certain inhibitions that you accept.
Dwight D. EisenhowerIn order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself.
Albert EinsteinMost people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar WildeWhy does your mind conform? Have you ever asked? Are you aware that you are conforming to a pattern? It doesn’t matter what that pattern is, whether you have established a pattern for yourself or it has been established for you.
Jiddu KrishnamurtiWhen you’re just like everybody else, you’ve nothing to offer other than your conformity.
Wayne DyerI don’t have much patience for people who are self-conscious about the act of eating, and it irritates me when someone denies themselves the pleasure of a bloody hunk of steak or a pungent French cheese because of some outdated nonsense about what’s appropriate or attractive.
Anthony BourdainPeople have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people – and that social norm is just something that has evolved over time.
Mark ZuckerbergFor how many things, which for our own sake we should never do, do we perform for the sake of our friends.
Marcus Tullius CiceroThe last proceeding of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. There is nothing so conformable to reason as this disavowal of reason.
Blaise PascalArguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.
Oscar WildeThe problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative.
Elon MuskTo hard necessity ones will and fancy must conform.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheIf he invited you out, he’s got to pay.
Beyonce KnowlesThroughout my years in business, I discovered something. I would always ask why you do things. The answers that I would invariably get are: ‚Oh, that’s just the way things are done around here.‘ Nobody knows why they do what they do. Nobody thinks very deeply about things in business.
Steve JobsIt’s very strange to go to cities like London and New York. People walk so quickly, they seem to be in a hurry all the time. And you don’t say ‚Hi‘ to everyone you meet, and you don’t smile to everyone you meet, because there’s just so many. Which is also very strange.
AuroraYou may be educated abroad, you may be a great scientist, politician, but you always have a sneaking fear that if you don’t go to temples or do the ordinary things that you have been told to do, something evil might happen, so you conform. What happens to the mind that conforms? Investigate it, please.
Jiddu KrishnamurtiThere are many times when a woman will ask another girl friend how she likes her new hat. She will reply, ‚Fine,‘ but slap her hand to her forehead the minute the girl leaves to yipe, ‚What a horror!‘
Marilyn MonroeNo people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.
Theodore RooseveltWe are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.
Gilbert K. ChestertonWhile children are struggling to be unique, the world around them is trying all means to make them look like everybody else.
A. P. J. Abdul KalamIt’s vulgar, coming from where I do, to talk about money.
Gordon RamsayIt is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.
AristotleAll cultures have these feelings about non-functional areas of activity. And the more time people have on their hands, the more they commit it to those areas.
Brian EnoYou know, you can make a small mistake in language or etiquette in Britain, or you could when I was younger, and really be made to feel it, and it’s the flick of a lash, but it would sting, and especially at school where there’s not much privacy, and so on. You could, yes, undoubtedly be made to feel crushed.
Christopher HitchensThe unsaid rule for living in a trailer park is: ‚If the door’s shut, don’t come a-knockin.‘ But if it’s open and you’re walkin‘ by, feel free to say, ‚Hello.‘
Matthew McConaugheyThe English don’t like concepts, really, not from a pop star. It’s alright if they come from an ‚intellectual,‘, but from a pop star you’re getting ahead of yourself. Part of the class game is that you shouldn’t rise above your station, and to start talking about concepts if you’re in the pop world is getting a bit uppity, isn’t it?
Brian EnoLike religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It’s too controversial.
Erma BombeckTo me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.
Margaret ThatcherConformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
John F. KennedyThe moral disapprobation of society has an impact on behavior in societies.
Joe BidenIn America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.
Bertrand RussellWe forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.
Arthur SchopenhauerEverybody around me had a Snapchat, and I said I would never get on it. I’m still on Instagram, you know? They convinced me to get Snapchat.
DJ KhaledToo often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.
Winston ChurchillWe are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.
Jiddu KrishnamurtiGenteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.
Friedrich NietzscheThe respected intellectuals are those who conform and serve power interests.
Noam ChomskySomewhere it is written that parents who are critical of other people’s children and publicly admit they can do better are asking for it.
Erma BombeckOnce 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 WoolfMen weren’t always happy for me. It was very challenging to watch a woman be so successful.
Lady GagaMost people are happy being average. Most are happy being faceless in a sea of faces.
Robert KiyosakiLet’s face it. No kid in high school feels as though they fit in.
Stephen KingIt’s considered acceptable in our culture to approach perfect strangers, as often or not who may be in extremis, and evangelise. I don’t see why that’s considered a normal thing.
Christopher HitchensWe are so conformist; nobody is thinking. We are all sucking up stuff; we have been trained to be consumers, and we are all consuming far too much.
Vivienne WestwoodI’m a woman, and anytime you tell a woman that she looks nice, it’s not going to upset her.
Angelina JolieWe cannot expect that all nations will adopt like systems, for conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
John F. KennedyHermits have no peer pressure.
Steven WrightYou aren’t normal if you sing to people. You aren’t a normal person. It’s nerve-racking.
The WeekndEvery utopia – let’s just stick with the literary ones – faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don’t fit in?
Margaret AtwoodMy message isn’t perfectly defined. I have, as a human being, fallen to peer pressure.
Kanye WestThe more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.
Mark TwainJust as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‚O.K.‘ has deposed the more affirmative ‚Yes,‘ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‚like‘ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.
Christopher HitchensBeing politically correct means saying what’s polite rather than what’s accurate. I like to be accurate.
Robert KiyosakiBlack men don’t like to be called ‚boys,‘ but women accept being called ‚girls.‘
Marilyn MonroeIf the standard transsexual person wants to be regarded as he or she, my sense is I’ll address you according to the part that you appear to be playing.
Jordan PetersonIf we help an educated man’s daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war? – not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?
Virginia WoolfAt a formal dinner party, the person nearest death should always be seated closest to the bathroom.
George CarlinI don’t eat with beautiful women alone.
Billy GrahamConsciously or unconsciously most of us adhere to what is expected of our role because we realize our social success depends on this. Some may refuse to play this game, but in the end they are marginalized and forced to play the outsider role, with limited options and decreasing freedom as they get older.
Robert Greene