Non Conformity Quotes

I like him. I have a weakness for losers. Invalids, foreigners, the fat boy of the class, the ones nobody ever wants to dance with. My heart beats for them. Maybe because I've always known that in some way I will forever be one of them.

And if the soul Is to know itself It is into a soul That it must look: The stranger and the enemy, we've seen him in the mirror.

Pour out wine till I become a wanderer from myself; for in selfhood and existence I have felt only fatigue.

One must not look inward too much, while the inside is yet tender. I do not wish to frighten myself until I can stand it.

Late, by myself, in the boat of myself, no light and no land anywhere, cloudcover thick. I try to stay just above the surface, yet I'm already under and living within the ocean.

There is a light seed grain inside. You fill it with yourself, or it dies.

... I stare into the fridge. Like a mirrored image of myself. Cold and empty, and the lights come on only when you open the door. Otherwise ice-cold purring darkness.

In ourselves we harbor the intuition of another evolution, of other possibilities of life.

You have mourned over others; now sit down for a while and weep over your own self.

I am myself. That is not enough.

Non-conformity is the only real passion worth being ruled by.

... but I'm always being invaded by others' souls so I can't see my own soul very well.

dreaming of the person you want to be is wasting the person you already are.

Is there an existence that is only mine?

Becoming is superior to being.

When I am told I am too old to do something, I try to do it right away.

What is a rebel? A man who says no.

I don't follow any system. All the laws you can lay down are only so many props to be cast aside when the hour of creation arrives.

If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.

One must never forbid oneself anything. One must also be able to go back, one must always be able to change.

To be a genuine individualist requires a great deal of strength and courage. It is never easy to chart new territory, to cross new frontiers, or to introduce subtle shadings to an established color.

From now on, I'll connect the dots my own way.

I am neither for conformity nor non-conformity. I am for individuality. If one's individuality is in effect non-conformity, then so be it. But basically, one's individuality consists of conformity--to one's self.

The American people...have a stake in non-conformity. For they know that the American genius is non-conformist.

Be neither a conformist or a rebel, for they are really the same thing. Find your own path, and stay on it.

I say, when your hair turns gray and your children think they know who you are, do the thing that shakes up who you think you are, even who you had prided yourself on being. When all those around you say they simply don't recognize you any longer, that's the real compliment.

All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions. All change is the result of a change in the contemporary state of mind.

That community is already in the process of dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy, where non-conformity with the accepted creed, political as well as religious, is a mark of disaffection; where denunciation, without specification or backing, takes the place of evidence; where orthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent; where faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has become so timid that we dare not enter our convictions in the open lists, to win or lose.

A writer or painter cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of nonconformity alive.

Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.

In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric.

I was an onion, layers and layers and layers under a thin, papery skin. If anyone had been able to cut me open, my bitter, irritating juices would have stung their eyes, and they would have cried. Although I couldn't cry myself, much at the time. But no one would cut me open.

In the middle of this it was good to have some moments in which whatever was left of you could sit in silence. When you could remember. When the evidence that had gathered could be sorted. And it was a difficulty if another person imagined these moments were their property. Your life got sliced from two sides like a supermarket salami until there was nothing left in the middle. You were the bits that had been given away right and left to others. Because they wanted the piece of you that belonged to them. Because they wanted more. Because they wanted passion. And you did not have it.

Do others, I wondered, "see things as I do? I do not think so, for if they did they would not still be alive." And, life-threatening though my vision seemed, I would not repudiate it: "Sometimes I think I shall die from being different even as I cling to the difference fiercely."

People would rather be wrong than be different.

A "Normal" person is the sort of person that might be designed by a committee. You know, "Each person puts in a pretty color and it comes out gray."

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.

When I was younger, not being accepted made me enraged, but now, I am not inclined to dismantle my history. If you banish the dragons, you banish the heroes-and we become attached to the heroic strain in our personal history.

There are a lot of things in this world that are more important than being popular. Being true to yourself is one of them.

If you are to be, you must begin by assuming responsibility. You alone are responsible for every moment of your life, for every one of your acts.

With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.

As an artist, it is central to be unsatisfied.

There is nothing wrong with you just because you haven't yet met people who share your interests or outlook on life. Unless you are doing something unhealthy or destructive, take pride in your beliefs, passions, and values. Know that you will eventually meet people who will appreciate you for being you.

What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!

One of the saddest things about conformity is the ghastly sort of non-conformity it breeds; the noisy protesting, the aggressive rebelliousness, the rigid counter-fetishism.

Believe nothing, No matter where you read it, Or who has said it, Not even if I have said it, Unless it agrees with your own reason And your own common sense.

Each one of us, as long as life stirs is us, may play a part in extricating ourselves from the power system by asserting our primacy as people in quiet acts of mental or physical withdrawal-in gestures of non-conformity, in abstentions, restrictions, inhibitions, which will liberate us from the domination of the pentagon of power.

Resolve to be thyself: and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery.

Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are.

Abnormal, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested.