Conformity Quotes - page 2

Group conformity scares the pants off me because it's so often a prelude to cruelty towards anyone who doesn't want to - or can't - join the Big Parade. (Bette Midler)
If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning. View quote
Carl Rogers
The only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of conformity. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
How are we to adjudicate among rival ontologies? Certainly the answer is not provided by the semantical formula "To be is to be the value of a variable"; this formula serves rather, conversely, in testing the conformity of a given remark or doctrine to a prior ontological standard. View quote
Willard van Orman Quine
Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good. View quote
George Santayana
Self-mastery is attained when the imagination has been directed and trained to conform with our desires-for although, in one sense, the imagination is inclined in the subconscious, yet it dominates the latter, and therefore, if we know how to guide it, our subconscious self will take charge of our material being and do its work just as we wish it to be done; or, in other words, exactly in conformity with our conscious suggestions. View quote
Émile Coué
We are what we were at birth, and each trait has remained in conformity with earth's and with heaven's logic: Be the devil's tool, resort to black magic, None can diverge from the ends which Heaven foreordained. View quote
Marianne Moore
Sanity is not truth. Sanity is conformity to what is socially expected. Truth is sometimes in conformity, sometimes not. View quote
Robert M. Pirsig
How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives? To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption? Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself. View quote
Kenneth Tynan
The truth of practical intellect is understood not as conformity to an extramental being but as conformity to a right desire; the end is no longer to know what is, but to bring into existence that which is not yet. View quote
Jacques Maritain
These are the sensations and feelings that are gradually blunted by education, staled by custom, rejected in favor of social conformity. (Herbert Read)
The best assurance any one can have of his interest in God, is doubtless the conformity of his soul to Him. When our heart is once turned into a conformity with the mind of God. when we feel our will conformed to His will, we shall then presently perceive a spirit of adoption within ourselves, teaching us to say, "Abba, Father." View quote
Ralph Cudworth
Not that I wish by any means to deny, that the mental life of individuals and peoples is also in conformity with law, as is the object of philosophical, philological, historical, moral, and social sciences to establish. View quote
Hermann von Helmholtz
Conformity may give you a quiet life; it may even bring you to a University Chair. But all change in history, all advance, comes from the nonconformists. If there had been no trouble-makers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves. View quote
A. J. P. Taylor
In most cases, to be reasonable means not to be obstinate, which in turn points to conformity with reality as it is. The principle of adjustment is taken for granted. When the idea of reason was conceived, it was intended to achieve more than the mere regulation of the relation between means and ends: it was regarded as the instrument for understanding the ends, for determining them. View quote
Max Horkheimer
Courtesy, modesty, good manners, conformity to definite ethical standards are universal, but what constitutes courtesy, modesty, good manners, and definite ethical standards is not universal. It is instructive to know that standards differ in the most unexpected ways. View quote
Franz Boas
We think that a powerful and vigorous movement is impossible without differences - "true conformity" is possible only in the cemetery. View quote
Joseph Stalin
I believe that writers, unless they consider themselves terribly exquisite, are at heart people who live by night, a little bit outside society, moving between delinquency and conformity. View quote
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
We must beware of yielding to the pressure of a spirit of cowardly conformity which proclaims itself everybody's friend in the hope that everybody will obligingly return the compliment. View quote
Antonin Sertillanges
One must do no violence to nature, nor model it in conformity to any blindly formed chimera. View quote
Janos Bolyai
If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good. (Thomas Watson, Jr.)
[E]ach of our voices has something unique to say. Not only should I not mold my life to the demands of external conformity; I can't even find the model by which to live outside myself. I can only find it within. View quote
Charles Taylor
The real end of prayer is not so much to get this or that single desire granted, as to put human life into full and joyful conformity with the will of God. View quote
Charles Bent
Morality is a test of our conformity rather than our integrity. View quote
Jane Rule
A big element of what they regard as conformity is simply a desire to have an audience. View quote
Karel Reisz