William Hazlitt Quotes

Bandwagons roll through our lives. It's up to you whether you jump on them unquestioningly or jump on them to overturn them and subvert them.

Men are destroyed for being rebellious, and women destroy themselves by failing to be rebellious. Unless you can make that next jump to either getting along with people or resisting people, you are ultimately destroying yourself.

Sometimes, when a tide starts to sweep, it makes no difference what the traditions are.

Those who govern us know it well, for they would sooner deny us bread than dare alter the observance of tradition.

Be skeptical, question authority, be a rebel. Do not conform and don’t be ordinary. Remember, all human progress is the result of far-sighted people challenging orthodoxy, tradition and rich, powerful, vested interests.

Custom is petrification; nothing but dynamite can dislodge it for a century.

It's true that every leader needs followers. We can't all be nonconformists at every moment, but conformity is dangerous - especially for an entity in formation.

How can we choose to selectively follow what we find comfortable and attack anybody who tries to break free from the norms that we choose to set?

The reason they want you to fit in... is that once you do, then they can ignore you.

At every point I am besieged by people who would like me to conform to some social norm of whatever sort of social group they expect me to be a part of. I never have any identification with these social groups.

There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.

If you attack the establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make you a member of it.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

I'm such a Goody Two-shoes, but I get a vicarious thrill at someone sticking it to the Man.

No, I'm not politically correct. I never wanted to be, and I never will be.

I'd loved to wear jeans and t-shirts, but everybody was in the peace movement back then. And that was my ploy. I had to be careful not to say things like 'I like meat.' Actually I just wanted to drink beer and to screw.

I don't believe in honors - it bothers me. Honors bother: honors is epaulettes; honors is uniforms. My papa brought me up this way.

Now, in music, it seems more like the popular crowd suppresses anyone who is different.

There's kind of this real social pressure to not argue about things.

I think a lot of people have lost respect for the individual, you know, the individual, the person who doesn't conform.

When I was young, we were taught not to dunk. We were taught not to stand out from the rest of the team. It's different now.

Piety and virtue lie in obedience and conformity, while nothing is more repugnant than change and innovation.

The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime.

No one can go on being a rebel too long without becoming an autocrat.

We are not rebels. Rebels defy authority and break laws at will.