#conform

But these realities will make themselves felt soon enough and while I am certainly not asking you to close your eyes to the experiences of earlier generations, I want to advise you not to conform too soon and to resist the pressure of practical necessity. ↗

— Felix Bloch

#am #asking #certainly #close #conform

The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else. ↗

— H.L. Mencken

#control #education #government #obedience #school

Ice dance should not be seen as a rigid conformist form of figure skating. There is a great deal of freedom and originality to be had. ↗

— Robin Cousins

#dance #deal #figure #figure skating #form

The opposite for courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow. ↗

— Jim Hightower

#conformity #cowardice #dead #even #fish

You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists. ↗

— Abbie Hoffman

#conformists #democracy #dissidents #freedom #gives

I just don't conform very well. ↗

— Shelby Lynne

#i #just #very #well

I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste. ↗

— Marcel Duchamp

#conforming #contradict #forced #i #my own

He likes driving very fast on the wrong side of the road," said Sarah. "Which I can completely understand. ↗

— Hilary McKay

#fast #life #nonconformity #family

I'd trapped myself in a script.... But to be scripted at all is to be prepackaged, programmed, pinned to a page. Only the unwritten can truly live a life. So who I was, what I was, had to be unwritten. ↗

— David James Duncan

#freedom #independence #individuality #freedom

It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#men