Nonconformity Quotes

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

A truly good person will speak truth, act with truth, and stand for Truth. A truly good person is not afraid to think from their heart; therefore, allowing nonconformist decisions, viewpoints, and perspectives to lead their life. By following their heart, they stand with their conscience, and only with God.

~ Suzy Kassem

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

Most human beings would have never been pained by the death of a human being if they had never seen a human being or pretending to be pained by that.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Plants are more courageous than almost all human beings: an orange tree would rather die than produce lemons, whereas instead of dying the average person would rather be someone they are not.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Many of the boys and men who are regarded as immature by some females are so deemed merely because they do not want to get married someday … or soon.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

At the age of four, you were an artist. And at seven, you were a poet.

~ Seth Godin

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

Most schooling is training for stupidity and conformity, and that's institutional, but occasionally you get a spark, somebody'll challenge your mind, make you think and so on, and that has a tremendous effect you just reach all sorts of people. Of course if you do it you may very have problems, you have to tread the narrow line. There are plenty of people who don't want students to think, they're afraid of the crisis of democracy. If people start thinking you get all these problems that I quoted before. They won't have enough humility to submit to a civil rule or they'll start trying to press their demands in the political arena and have ideas of their own, instead of beleiving what they're told. And privelage and power typically doesn't want that and so they react and the high school teacher that tries to get students to think may find oppression, firing and so on.

~ Noam Chomsky

Freedom began on the day the first sheep wandered away from the herd.

~ Marty Rubin

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

If we had to earn our age by thinking for ourselves at least once a year, only a handful of people would reach adulthood.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Some people respect some people only because some people respect them.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Most people believe most of the things they believe only because they believe that most people believe them.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

~ Rob Siltanen

The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

~ Rob Siltanen

You were born an original work of art. Stay original always. Originals cost more than imitations.

~ Suzy Kassem

A sure way of retaining the grace of heaven is to disregard outward appearances, and diligently to cultivate such things as foster amendment of life and fervour of soul, rather than to cultivate those qualities that seem most popular.

~ Thomas À Kempis

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

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

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

~ Thomas Hardy

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

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

Do not conform to seek the seekers, but leave the leavers. Wisdom comes from facing what you do not yet understand.

~ Shannon L. Alder

This was the price for the the strange life she had chosen, but she had gone into it with eyes open, and there was no profit in regret.

~ Donna Woolfolk Cross

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

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

~ Criss Jami

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

~ Mamur Mustapha

If you don’t give yourself permission to create a new world, chances are nobody else will.

~ James Altucher

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 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

Many marriages would have been laid to rest a long time ago, if they were not on a life-support machine called other people’s opinions and/or expectations.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

You can do the right thing that seems wrong to others, or the wrong thing that seems right, and its actually puerile to await recommendation when what you are about to do doesn't concerns anyone.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Never subject to the rules, believing that the correct judgement and healthy nature keep her in the honesty she lived in.

~ Émile Zola

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

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

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

~ Boris Pasternak

If unconventional ideas = sperm, then public opinion = abortion.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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

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