A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove.

There is no harm in repeating a good thing.

You 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.

Understand: as children and young adults, we are taught to conform to certain codes of behavior and ways of doing things. We learn that being different comes with a social price.

To 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.

Of course it’s the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.

Dusting is a good example of the futility of trying to put things right. As soon as you dust, the fact of your next dusting has already been established.

Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.

Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

It is good to express a thing twice right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able to walk and get around.

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

I can’t see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That’s terrible.

We 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.

Most people are happy being average. Most are happy being faceless in a sea of faces.

The Heads were the only band on that scene that had a groove.

Throughout 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.

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred.

Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.

The 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.

To hard necessity ones will and fancy must conform.

People are so caught in a routine, doing the same things over and over.

‚No comment‘ is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again.

To Sun-tzu and the ancient Chinese, doing something extraordinary had little effect without a setup of something ordinary. You had to mix the two – to fix your opponent’s expectations with some banal, ordinary maneuver, a comfortable pattern that they would then expect you to follow.

I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny.

We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.

It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.

The first time you say something, it’s heard. The second time, it’s recognized, and the third time it’s learned.

In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself.

Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.

Once 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.

Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.

If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again.

Every 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?

Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always come around to where you started again.

We cannot expect that all nations will adopt like systems, for conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form the headless monster, a great, brutish idiot that goes where prodded.

When you’re just like everybody else, you’ve nothing to offer other than your conformity.

The respected intellectuals are those who conform and serve power interests.

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

When you put on a uniform, there are certain inhibitions that you accept.

Since the child knew his parents would give in, he tried the same trick again and again.

That is never too often repeated, which is never sufficiently learned.

Consciously 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.

We 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.

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.

It is hard to be an individual in Japan.

You listen to the radio and all the songs sound the same, from 8 in the morning to 12.

Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.

You should do what other people do, unless you have a very good reason not to.

No, I will be the pattern of all patience; I will say nothing.

Why 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.

I’m gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we’re not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want.

When I tell a child something the first time, I’m nice. The 15th time, I start to get aggravated.

While children are struggling to be unique, the world around them is trying all means to make them look like everybody else.

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

The 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.

Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.