Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

I was seen in earlier years by family members and people of authority as somebody wasting his time. I had trouble with the restrictions of conformity. It made me edgy.

I don't want to follow the herd.

Society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal impulses and preferences.

Life is a difficult game. You can win it only by retaining your birthright to be a person. And to retain this right, you will have to be willing to take the social or external risks involved in ignoring pressures to do things the way others say they should be done

Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don't do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl.

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

All the great masters in the world have been saying only one thing down the centuries, "Have your own mind and have your own individuality. Don't be a part of the crowd; don't be a wheel in the whole mechanism of a vast society. Be individual, on your own. Live life with your own eyes; listen to music with your own ears." But we are not doing anything with our own ears, with our own eyes, with our own minds; everything is being taught, and we are following it.

I'm for everybody. There are no set rules. But if one's not a joiner. To hell with all of them!

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.

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of everyone of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

I do not say think as I think, but think in my way. Fear no shadows, least of all in that great spectre of personal unhappiness which binds half the world to orthodoxy.

I'd never just want to do what everybody else did. I'd be contributing to the sameness of everything.

I think we were just coming out and being ourselves, instead of operating within boundaries that other people had created. We decided to do away with those boundaries.

I've tried actively to define myself and redefine myself, and not be pigeonholed.

I don't believe in societal restrictions. It wasn't a choice - conformity simply never occurred to me.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

There are those who dance to the rhythm that is played to them, those who only dance to their own rhythm, and those who don't dance at all.

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

I don't care much about conforming.

Rock n' roll to me is all about freedom of thought and to be whatever you want to be.

Sometimes the solitary voice can be the best one.

Unless you hit your television with a sledgehammer, you're not going to be able to be an individual.

I'm not part of any movement; I don't like being fettered.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I'd rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me.

I love people that willfully defy what you're supposed to be and create their own definition of their selves.