#conformity

To be one's self, and unafraid whether right or wrong, is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity. ↗

— Irving Wallace

#conformity #cowardice #easy #more #right

The so-called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples. ↗

— Carter G. Woodson

#been #conformity #defects #does #education

Prime numbers are divisible only by 1 and by themselves. They hold their place in the infinite series of natural numbers, squashed, like all numbers, between two others, but one step further than the rest. They are suspicious, solitary numbers, which is why Mattia thought they were wonderful. Sometimes he thought that they had ended up in that sequence by mistake, that they'd been trapped, like pearls strung on a necklace. Other times he suspected that they too would have preferred to be like all others, just ordinary numbers, but for some reason they couldn't do it. this second thought struck him mostly at night, in the chaotic interweaving of images that comes before sleep, when the mind is too weak to tell itself lies. ↗

— Paolo Giordano

#lonliness #numbers #solitude #nature

I am not made like any of those I have seen. I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different. ↗

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#nonconformity #identity

The attractive idea that we can now have a parliament of man with authority to control the conduct of nations by legislation or an international police force with power to enforce national conformity to rules of right conduct is a counsel of perfection. ↗

— Elihu Root

#authority #conduct #conformity #control #counsel

The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time. ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#creativity #individuality #courage

But let it not be said that we did nothing. Let not those who love the power of the welfare/warfare state label the dissenters of authoritarianism as unpatriotic or uncaring. Patriotism is more closely linked to dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security. Understanding the magnificent rewards of a free society makes us unbashful in its promotion, fully realizing that maximum wealth is created and the greatest chance for peace comes from a society respectful of individual liberty. ↗

— Ron Paul

#dissent #freedom #liberty #nonconformity #patriotism

It is a brave thing to have courage to be an individual; it is also, perhaps, a lonely thing. But it is better than not being an individual, which is to be nobody at all. ↗

— Eleanor Roosevelt

#eleanor-roosevelt #individuality #courage

It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia. ↗

— Eric Hoffer

#individuality #dreams

We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything, than when we are at play. ↗

— Charles Schaefer

#freedom #fun #maturity #orthodoxy #play