#mit

It is simply wrong to begin with a theme, symbol or other abstract unifying agent, and then try to force characters and events to conform to it. ↗

— Thomas Pynchon

#conformity

perhaps, if one wishes to remain an individual in the midst of the teeming multitudes, one must make oneself grotesque. ↗

— Salman Rushdie

#individualism #conformity

If a man does not keep pace with his companion, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#individuality #conformity

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

— Criss Jami

#cool #coolness #fool #independence #individuality

We like to admit to only that which already glows, although it is nobler to support brightness before it glows, not afterwards. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#books #brightness #dejan-stojanovic #glow #literature

How could you tell how much of it was lies? It might be true that the average human being was better off now than before the Revolution. The only evidence to the contrary was the mute protest in your own bones, the instinctive feeling that the conditions you lived in were intolerable and that at some other time they must have been different. It struck him that the truly characteristic thing about modern life was not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness. Life, if you looked about you, bore no resemblance not only to the lies that streamed out of the telescreens, but even to the ideals that the Party was trying to achieve. Great areas of it, even for a party member, were neutral and nonpolitical, a matter of slogging through dreary jobs, fighting for a place on the Tube, darning a worn-out sock, cadging a saccharine tablet, saving a cigarette end. The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering--a world of steel and concrete, of monstrous machines and terrifying weapons--a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting--three hundred million people all with the same face. ↗

— George Orwell

#life

I regret that I didn’t realize that actually they’ve got no power over you at school — it’s all just a trick to indoctrinate you into being a conditioned, tame, placid citizen. Rebel, children, I urge you, fight the turgid slick of conformity with which they seek to smother your glory. ↗

— Russell Brand

#humour #conformity

Suppose we were able to share meanings freely without a compulsive urge to impose our view or conform to those of others and without distortion and self-deception. Would this not constitute a real revolution in culture? ↗

— David Bohm

#conformity

Once, I ordered two thousand lady bugs from the local garden center and set them loose in the atrium. I sprinkled marigold seeds in the ficus planters and put gold fish in the lobby fountain. These are things I did with no consequences, no repercussions. My nineteen detentions were for smart answers and missed homework. There is no equivalent punishment for making the world a stranger place. ↗

— Brenna Yovanoff

#school #strange #conformity

All the heroes of tomorrow are the heretics of today. ↗

— Yip Harburg

#heretics #heroes #conformity