John Dewey Quotes

Society becomes how we behave.

People aren't autonomous creatures. They're under a lot of pressure themselves.

Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others.

No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

Peer pressure is just that: pressure.

We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable.

Quite a few people have to believe something is normal before it becomes normal - a sort of 'voting' situation. But once the threshold is reached, then everyone demands to do whatever it is.

Peer pressure and social norms are powerful influences on behaviour, and they are classic excuses.

None of us is immune to suggestion. We are social beings and live in a social world.

… the enforcement of public opinion depends on our appreciation of the approbation and disapprobation of others; and this appreciation is founded on our sympathy, which it can hardly be doubted was originally developed through natural selection as one of the most important elements of the social instincts.

When people are free to do as we please, they usually imitate each other.

When you're in a friend circle, you all kind of talk the same way. And it's hard to do on-the-fly radio edits of yourself.

A code of behavior is an inevitable part of life in any community, and if we hadn't inherited ours, we should have had to invent one.

Most conduct is guided by norms rather than by laws. Norms are voluntary and are effective because they are enforced by peer pressure.

It is not good for man to cherish a solitary ambition. Unless there be those around him, by whose example he may regulate himself, his thoughts, desires, and hopes will become extravagant, and he the semblance, perhaps the reality, of a madman

Ultimately peer pressure can lead people to bully, but peer pressure can also say bullying is not acceptable.

I started off dancing and playing sports, and I joined the drama stuff, the theatre stuff in middle school because my friends were involved, and it was kind of the cool thing to do.

Peer pressure plays a huge role in people's desire to get married.

Human beings are a social species. We like to hang together in groups, just like wildebeests, just like lions. Wildebeests don't hang with lions because lions eat wildebeests. Human beings are like that. We do what that group does that we're trying to identify with.

Just because so many conforming kids wake up every morning asking, 'What is everybody else going to wear today?' doesn't mean that they don't wish it were different. Peer pressure is just that: pressure.

I'm a big fan of community, and I think independence is over-rated.

Everyone is influencing the people around them one way or another.

No very sharp line can be drawn between social psychology and individual psychology.

It's inevitable your environment will influence what you do.

Conscience in most men, is but the anticipation of the opinions of others.