Nonconformity Quotes

Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals. ~ Aldo Leopold

I think of my father growing up in South Jersey, the son of second-generation German immigrant glassblowers. The opportunities for him of feeling that aspiration, that yearning, get out of the small town, connect to a larger world, get yourself to New York, wanting to play the piano at every opportunity, bonding with people who were on a similar path, ending up in Provincetown, which was kind of nexus for nonconformity, and artistic dropout reality. ~ Anne Waldman

Despite the enormous pressures in Hollywood, Kim Kardashian never set out to fit in, and it's this exact nonconformity that drives our global obsession with her. ~ Jeetendr Sehdev

People may be constrained in two basic ways: physically, by confining them in jails, mental hospitals, and so forth; and symbolically, by confining them in occupations, social roles, and so forth. Actually, confinement of the second type is more common and pervasive in the day-to-day conduct of society's business; as a rule, only when the symbolic, or socially informal, confinement of conduct fails or proves inadequate, is recourse taken to physical, or socially formal, confinement…. When people perform their social roles properly – in other words, when social expectations are adequately met – their behavior is considered normal. Though obvious, this deserves emphasis: a waiter must wait on tables; a secretary must type; a father must earn a living; a mother must cook and sew and take care of her children. Classic systems of psychiatric nosology had nothing to say about these people, so long as they remained neatly imprisoned in their respective social cells; or, as we say about the Negroes, so long as they "knew their place." But when such persons broke out of "jail" and asserted their liberty, they became of interest to the psychiatrist. ~ Thomas Szasz

God, as represented by Scripture, by nature is the true non-conformist. He does not need to conform to any truth; He does not need to conform to some moral law. It proclaims that He is the Truth; He defines Morality: the Great I Am, the Beginning and the End who radiates all that is Holy. Therefore, and unless we too were wholly holy and omniscient, we would do well to understand at the very least that even if this God were to wipe away all in existence, then despite my opinion or your opinion, His decision would be objectively good and moral simply because He is the one doing it. ~ Criss Jami

A woman who thinks she is intelligent demands the same rights as man. An intelligent woman gives up. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self? ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

-I have to admit that ever since I started to rip-up the lawns of rich people I have felt a lot calmer! ~ Andrew James Pritchard

The eager and often inconsiderate appeals of reformers and revolutionists are indispensable to counterbalance the inertia and fossilism marking so large a part of human institutions. ~ Walt Whitman

I am not a number; I am a free man. ~ Patrick McGoohan

In his mother's honor, vowing not to commit the "fashionable stupidity" of ignoring things he didn't understand, Max performed a brave act of nonconformity by accepting the possibility that his dreams might be exactly what they seemed: real. ~ Sol Luckman

I dare say a good many ... would have kept quiet and thought about keeping on the right side of the Chief, but I'm afraid I'm not much good at that. ~ Richard Adams

Cause and effect is the basis of my education, leading me to an essence far more profound than any rule of societal conditioning. ~ Ka Chinery

Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Yes, Kālāmas, it is proper that your have doubt, that you have perplexity, for a doubt has arisen in a matter which is doubtful. Now, look you Kālāmas, do not be led by reports, or traditions, or hearsay. Be not led by the authority of religious texts, not by the delight in speculative opinions, nor by seeming possibilities, not by the idea: 'this is our teacher'. But, O Kālāmas, when you know for yourself that certain things are unwholesome, and wrong, and bad, then give them up... And when you know for yourself that certain things are wholesome and good, then accept them and follow them. ~ Gautama Buddha

I never blindly roamed with a team just for the sake of social labeling or fitting in. I was never part of a particular group, scene or tribe. I was friends with everybody. My best friend in high school was prom queen, yet I was voted the biggest nonconformist of my senior class. ~ Suzy Kassem

When I was four years old they tried to test my IQ, they showed me this picture of three oranges and a pear. They asked me which one is different and does not belong; they taught me different was wrong. ~ Ani DiFranco

But I think the Court again heard clearly the simple theme that ennobles our Constitution: that no one shall be made to feel uncomfortable or unsafe because of nonconformity. ~ E.B. White

I was aware that he was laughing at me, but I told myself I didn't care what other people thought and would dress how I liked. Of course, like many self-consciously wacky people, I was in fact paralyzed by fear of the opinions of others and made the effort to appear as the maddest of the mad headbangers just in case anyone had the slightest lingering doubt as to the depth of my devotion. In fact, I think my disguise felt so fragile I couldn't allow it a single crack. If I did it might fall to bits and leave the real me shrivelling under the evaluating gaze of my peer group. ~ Mark Barrowcliffe

Nonconformity in dating is all about being authentic and true to yourself. ~ Amy Leigh Mercree

These eight independent satellite states of the psychopathic personality
Machiavellian Egocentricity, Impulsive Nonconformity, Blame Externalization, Carefree Nonplanfulness, Fearlessness, Social Potency, Stress Immunity, and Coldheartedness. ~ Kevin Dutton

If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity. ~ Bill Vaughan

There's a lot of creative music happening in the underground, which is a very hopeful kind of sign....[These initiators are] usually kind of outcasts--for the most part no one can relate to them. And it's all over the planet; you go and look in the alleys and under the doorways, in the coal mines--they're there, lurking in the
shadows; a significant amount of people in different parts of the planet who are genuinely creative. And I associate and attach myself to that. Usually when I go to any new place I try to find out from the musicians--they'll usually say 'this guy can't play,' or 'he's crazy,' 'he's not doing anything,' 'he's a sick, warped, demented
fool'--and immediately I try to find him. He's probably one of us. ~ Anthony Braxton

You should aim to be independent of any one vote, of any one fashion, of any one century. ~ Baltasar Gracian

Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else? ~ James Thurber

They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own. ~ Antonio Porchia

For all have not the gift of martyrdom. ~ John Dryden

Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature! ~ George Bernard Shaw

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead. ~ Aldous Huxley

I am not a lady
I live in an elevator
in a big department store America.
"Your floor, lady?"
"I don't have a floor,
I live in the elevator."
"You can't just live in an elevator."
They all say that
except for the man from Time magazine
who acted very cool.
We stop and let people into
dresses, better dresses, beauty,
and on the top floor,
home furnishings and then
the credit office, suddenly stark
and no nonsense this is it.
At each floor I look out
at the ladies quietly becoming
ladies and I say "huh"
reflectively.
My hair is long and wild
full of little twigs and cockleburrs.
I visit the floors only for water.
I make my own food
from the berries and frightened rabbits -
I pray forgive me brother as I eat -
that grow wild in the elevator.
Once every three months,
solstice and equinox,
a cop comes and clubs me a little.
The man from Time says
I articulate my generation something
wobble squeegy squiggle pop pop
Yesterday pausing at childrens
I saw another lady
take off all her clothes
and go to live in #7.
We are waiting to fill
all thirteen. ~ Jean Tepperman

Freedom means nothing unless it means the freedom to be different ~ Marty Rubin

He'd made a name for himself out there in the world beyond not just in spite of the distinctly unfashionable persona he presented, but, perhaps, BECAUSE of it. ~ Chris Matthews

He who prides himself an extraordinary person by his deeds is rejected by the world; he who has independent ideas is hated by the mass. ~ Shang Yang

Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. ~ Martin Luther

I took the other road, all right, but only because it was the easy road for me, the way I wanted to go. If I've encountered some unnecessary resistance that's because most of the traffic is going the other way. ~ Edward Abbey

Creation from chaos is natural. We've come to a place where we've realized that we have this actual physical need to create things. We've discovered that we hate people en masse, we're sick of homogenized culture, and these realizations have left holes in our hearts. We create to fill those holes, to be able to sleep at night knowing we've done something, even a small something, to confront the manufactured culture that is currently being churned out. ~ Renee Rigdon

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

Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity. ~ Eric Hoffer

It is an extremely strong desire in a fool to be regarded as cool. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

If one is to succeed in anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession. ~ Carlos Castaneda

Most people are just a waste of sanity. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Most people want so desperately to be an individual yet are so easily shaped by the media. ~ Criss Jami

For nonconformity the world will whip you with its displeasure. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

All art is based on nonconformity ... Without nonconformity we would have had no Bill of Rights or Magna Carta, no public education system, no nation upon this continent, no continent, no science at all, no philosophy, and considerably fewer religions. ~ Ben Shahn

Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. ~ Anais Nin

The Australians, it seems to me, thrive on their remoteness from the world and see it as a way of keeping up a code of "No worries, mate," while peddling their oddities to visitors: nonconformity is at once a fact of life for many, and a selling point. ~ Pico Iyer

The system loves resistance. Resistance is often creative and it feeds on creativity until the subversive becomes just another pre-packaged lifestyle on special offer. So Cease to Resist. Relax and enjoy the PandaemonAeon. Believe everything and anything. Seek not proof, but take pleasure in your choice of belief. Wipe that superior sneer of your face and try smiling (if only inwardly) at the people/institutions/beliefs that you've waged your personal war against. Wouldn't it be more fun if you didn't run around quite so hard trying to be an individual, or fighting to prove or uphold your chosen belief-system? ~ Phil Hine

I reject any path which rejects life, but I can't help loving Sufism because it sounds so beautiful. It gives relief in the midst of battle. ~ Naguib Mahfouz

The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.
Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.
The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it's a job.
Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.
I call the process of doing your art 'the work.' It's possible to have a job and do the work, too. In fact, that's how you become a linchpin.
The job is not the work. ~ Seth Godin

Salvation lies not in the faithfulness to forms, but in the liberation from them. ~ Boris Pasternak

If it hasn't already done so, the church ... must recognize that it lives in a pagan society; it must seek for values and norms not shared by society. In short, it will either recover the Christian doctrine of nonconformity or cease to have any authentic Christian voice. ~ Doris Janzen Longacre

You know, Qhuinn's an interesting character." Saxton reached out with an elegant hand and picked up his port. "He's one of my favorite cousins, actually. His nonconformity is admirable and he's survived things that would crush a lesser male. Don't know that being in love with him would be easy, however."
Blay didn't go near that one. "So do you come here often?"
Saxton laughed, his pale eyes glinting, "Not for discussion, huh. ~ J.R. Ward

There was alienation in the standing consciousness that his squareness would not fit the round hole that had been prepared for him. ~ Thomas Hardy

To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics. ~ Mary McCarthy

Not being yourself is the worst form of self-disrespect. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Clothed in my dignity, the only worthy garment, I go my way. ~ Mariama Ba

There's a lot of mediocrity being celebrated, and a lot of wonderful stuff being ignored or discouraged. ~ Sean Penn

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously. ~ Hubert H. Humphrey

If you cannot think for yourself, then it's most likely that you are watching your television system right now. But if you can think for yourself, then it's most likely that the system is watching you right now. ~ Suzy Kassem

Anyone can be anything, irrespective of their stars;
Anyone can be anything, irrespective of their sex (or orientation, if you may);
Anyone can be anything, irrespective of their age;
Anyone can be anything, irrespective of their size;
Anyone can be anything, irrespective of their religion (or choice of nonconformity);
Anyone can be anything, irrespective of their colour (or absence thereof);
Anyone can be anything, irrespective of any previous defining moments;
Anyone can be anything, irrespective of anything;
Even if, just, for a while.
It all comes from a place of choice, will, and determination.
And if you, probably, wonder if I blunder when I juggle such trivial and contrasting ideologies,
That's simply because I can be just about anything.
CHECK: Anyone can be anything, but not everything is expedient for everyone. ~ Ufuoma Apoki

Authority should be questioned, hierarchies should be circumvented, nonconformity should be admired, and creativity should be nurtured. ~ Walter Isaacson

There is only one way under high heaven to get the best of an argument - and that is to avoid it . ~ Dale Carnegie

Democracy is nonconformity; it is mutual loyalty, even when we have to attack one another's ideas - ideas, which, because they are always human, are always incomplete. ~ Joost A.M. Meerloo

The believer's cross is no longer any and every kind of suffering, sickness, or tension, the bearing of which is demanded. The believer's cross must be, like his Lord's, the price of his social nonconformity. It is not, like sickness or catastrophe, an inexplicable, unpredictable suffering; it is the end of the path freely chosen after counting the cost. It is not, like Luther's or Thomas Muntzer's or Zinzendorf's or Kierkegaard's cross, an inward wrestling of the sensitive soul with self and sin; it is the social reality of representing in an unwilling world the Order to come. ~ John Howard Yoder

Giving style to one's character - a great and rare art! It is exercised by those who see all the strengths and weaknesses of their own natures and then comprehend them in an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason and even weakness delights the eye. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

She was a surprise, and let's face it, few people are. ~ Donna Lynn Hope

Today, one must either be isolated and cut off, or a carefully guarded, affluent drop-out, to allow one's children to play in an environment where they listen to people rather than to stars, speakers, or instructors. All over the world, one can see the rapid encroachment of the disciplined acquiescence that characterizes the audience, the client, the customer. ~ Ivan Illich

We are fighting now to save that endangered species-the individual. ~ Marty Rubin

The masses are crude, lame, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them but to drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them. ~ Emma Goldman

Beauty is whatever gives joy. ~ Hugh Nibley

Snark functions as a device to punish human spontaneity, eccentricity, nonconformity, and simple error. Everyone is being snarked into line, ~ Ryan Holiday

Your path is yours alone. And if it's the path less traveled, that's absolutely fine. The world doesn't need more conformists. The world needs more people who create and question and search. ~ Laird Hamilton

In your absolute defiance against tyranny, lies and all odds; lies therein, your true moral strength. Rise! ~ Mamur Mustapha

This conditioning of children to fear nonconformity and blindly obey ensures continued obedience as adults. The difficult task of learning how to make moral choices, how to accept personal responsibility, how to deal with the chaos of human life is handed over to God-like authority figures. The process makes possible a perpetuation of childhood. It allows the adult to bask in the warm glow and magic of divine protection. It masks from them and from others the array of human weaknesses, including our deepest dreads, our fear of irrelevance and death, our vulnerability and uncertainty. It also makes it difficult, if not impossible, to build mature, loving relationships, for the believer is told it is all about them, about their needs, their desires, and above all, their protection and advancement. Relationships, even within families, splinter and fracture. Those who adopt the belief system, who find in the dictates of the church and its male leaders a binary world of right and wrong, build an exclusive and intolerant comradeship that subtly or overtly shuns and condemns the "unsaved." People are no longer judged by their intrinsic qualities, by their actions or capacity for self-sacrifice and compassion, but by the rigidity of their obedience. This defines the good and the bad, the Christian and the infidel. And this obedience is a blunt and effective weapon against the possibility of a love that could overpower the dictates of the hierarchy. In many ways it is love the leaders ~ Chris Hedges

The implication of nonconformity is intolerable to Communists. ~ Doan Van Toai

Its hard to be a diamond in a rhinestone world. ~ Dolly Parton

At one time or another most of us at the Creek have been suspected of a degree of madness. Madness is only a variety of mental nonconformity ... ~ Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

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

It's in the morning, for most of us. It's that time, those few seconds when we're coming out of sleep but we're not really awake yet. For those few seconds we're something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and something of them and their world still clings to us. For those few moments we are unformed, uncivilized. We are not the people we know as ourselves, but creatures more in tune with a tree than a keyboard. We are untitled, unnamed, natural, suspended between was and will be, the tadpole before the frog, the worm before the butterfly. We are for a few brief moments, anything and everything we could be. And then ... and then
ah
we open our eyes and the day is before us and ... we become ourselves. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Every great historic change has been based on nonconformity, has been bought either with the blood or with the reputation of nonconformists. ~ Ben Shahn

The thing is, I don't really have any coming-out narratives of my own. I never felt as though anyone was entitles to a red-carpet presentation of who I am and how I identify. When I initially found myself attracted to women in college, for example, I simply showed up at the next family function with my first girlfriend in tow and introduced her as such. I didn't call each family member ahead of time and instruct them to brace themselves, nor did I write lengthy letters detailing the intricacies of my new desires. Likewise, when I'm meeting people for the first time at parties or other social engagements and they post the inevitable, "So what do you do?" I respond as routinely as possible: "Oh, I work in the sex industry. You?"
I'm not trying to be provocative; rather, I've always believed that being "out" is the most powerful tool of activism available to disadvantaged minority communities, sex workers included, I find that when you approach a supposedly radical issue (queerness, nonmonogamy, atheism, gender nonconformity) with the same nonchalance as you would a less controversial topic (accounting, marriage, the weather), you give the other party permission to treat it with the same accepting ambivalence. We're pack animals, and we're constantly comparing ourselves to one another. We look for approval from our peers, and in many cases we use their reactions and opinions to help guide our own. I often observe people, who I've just disclosed to, pause to shift their eyes ~ Andre Shakti

But should we accept this negative view of power? Is power all bad? Specifically, can Christians share in this devaluation of power and discipline as inherently evil? Can we who claim to be disciples - who are called and predestined to be conformed to the likeness of the Son (Rom. 8:29) - be opposed to discipline and formation as such? Can we who are called to be subject to the Lord of life really agree with the liberal Enlightenment notion of the autonomous self? Are we not above all called to subject ourselves to our Domine and conform to his image? Of course, we are called not to conform to the patterns of 'this world' (Rom. 12:2) or to our previous evil desires (1 Peter 1:14), but that is a call not to nonconformity as such but rather to an alternative conformity through a counterformation in Christ, a transformation and renewal directed toward conformity to his image. By appropriating the liberal Enlightenment notion of negative freedom and participating in its nonconformist resistance to discipline (and hence a resistance to the classical spiritual disciplines), Christians are in fact being conformed to the patterns of this world (contra Rom. 12:2). ~ James K.A. Smith

It gives me pleasure to find that public liberty is effectually secured in each and all the policies of the United States, though somewhat differently modeled. ~ Ezra Stiles

The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors. ~ John Stuart Mill

Some people respect some people only because some people respect them. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

It then becomes necessary to stop short and make a choice: Either/Or. Either one drifts with their absurd system of ideas, believing that this is the human community. Or one dissents totally from their system of ideas and stands as a lonely human being. (But luckily one notices that the others are in the same crisis and making the same choices.) ~ Paul Goodman

Morality was viewed by the Egyptians not as the assertion of self against the world but rather as the individual search for harmony with the eternal order ... The Egyptian was free to seek out a place in a benevolent world order, but he was not to disrupt it by either nonconformity or self-abnegation. ~ Norman F. Cantor

Nonconformity is an empty goal, and rebellion against prevailing opinion merely because it is prevailing should no more be praised than acquiescence to it. Indeed, it is often a mask for cowardice, and few are more pathetic than those who flaunt outer differences to expiate their inner surrender. ~ William H. Whyte

Do something unconventional and they call it depravity. ~ Marty Rubin

We'll have for a president a symbolic Rebel against his own power whose election was underwritten by inhuman soulless profit-machines whose takeover of American civic and spiritual life will convince Americans that rebellion against the soulless inhumanity of corporate life will consist in buying products from corporations that do the best job of representing corporate life as empty and soulless. We'll have a tyranny of conformist nonconformity presided over by a symbolic outsider whose very election depended on our deep conviction that his persona is utter bullshit. A rule of image, which because it's so empty makes everyone terrified - they're small and going to die, after all - ~ David Foster Wallace

But Jakob had the gift of confession, could talk about how he wanted to touch her and be with her, with all the daring and athletic skill he brought to riding a unicycle or walking on a tightrope. He was small and compact and muscular, and also intellectually muscular, mentally something of an acrobat. Sometimes she felt that those intellectual acrobatics were a bit tiring; at those times she felt less as if they were feeling everything together, more as if she were simply his audience, someone to applaud his latest leap through the burning hoop of existentialism and his backflip onto the trampoline of nonconformity. But ~ Joe Hill

So distracting, so complete is she that she is gone before many realize that she had no escort, she was along, a parade of one. ~ Jerry Spinelli

A hint of nonconformity was all he would risk. ~ William Landay

Nonconformity is nothing but self-interest in disguise. ~ Lisa Kleypas

What made Einstein special was his impertinence, his nonconformity, and his distaste for dogma. Einstein's genius reminds us that a society's competitive advantage comes not from teaching the multiplication or periodic tables but from nurturing rebels. Grinds have their place, but unruly geeks change the world. (Walter Issacson, Wired) ~ Alexandra Robbins

What forests of laurel we bring, and the tears of mankind, to those who stood firm against the opinion of their contemporaries! ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Being on the side of the majority is often a sign that you are wrong, or the most unlikely to be right. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

One of the basic things about a string is that it can vibrate in many different shapes or forms, which gives music its beauty. ~ Edward Witten

I don't belong to the masses, I've been against the masses all my life, and I'm not in favour of dogs. ~ Thomas Bernhard