Michael Rapaport Quotes

In a society that tries to standardize thinking, individuality is not highly prized.

I have an aversion to being mislabeled. Here's a label I'd accept: I'm an 'individual.' I'm someone who can't follow, and doesn't want to lead.

We have to wake up. We have to refuse to be a clone.

I didn't want people to decide what I was going to wear and what I was going to look like and how I should behave.

But for everyone, I think, there is always a pressure to conform, and I guess as you get older you realize it's less interesting to do that. It starts with you, though, saying, 'I know what I like doing and that's what I'm going to do.'

If you want to sing out, sing out, and if you want to be free, be free, cause there's a million ways to be, you know that there are.

'Divergent' is a story about people who don't fit into a category - that is a big part of the message - but it's also about conformity and forcing people into these simple archetypes. At the end of the day, humans don't exist like that. We're multifaceted.

We don't want power, we don't want to be congressmen, bankers, we want to be ourselves.

If I don't belong because of what I think and because of my opinions, then so be it. What can one do about it? One can't bend over backwards or pretend to be someone else just to belong. And in any case, it doesn't work. Once you no longer belong, it's over.

Power frees us from the chains of conformity.

We don't need to be categorized - we are all individual and beautifully unique.

We must never lose our individuality.

You can be normal if you choose to be.

Through fear of resembling one another, through horror of having to submit, through uncertainty as well, through skepticism and complexity, there is a multitude of individual little beliefs for the triumph of strange little individuals.

I'm not going to be a rebel and offend anybody, but I'm not going to live in somebody else's image.

You can not live your life just based on what everyone else thinks.

What I object to in Mother is that she wants me to think her thoughts. Apart from the question of hypocrisy, I prefer my own.

Say what you think / Love who you love.

I hate to tell people what they should think 'cause I really have an aversion when people tell me what to think.

I like independence, I like creating my own world, not being in a system. There are more possibilities, I think.

Think as I think," said a man, "or you are abominably wicked; you are a toad." And after I thought of it, I said, "I will, then, be a toad.

What a tiresome place America would be if freedom meant we all had to think alike or be the same color or wear the same gray flannel suit! That road leads to the conformity of the graveyard!

I just want people to admit that there's no one way to live your life.

There are two metaphors for Mario the person and not Mario the footballer. I think I am a man, but I don't believe I need to say it. But I could also be Peter Pan because I do things my own way and I am free. So, yes, maybe I should say that I am Peter Pan - although I am much more of a man.

I must be allowed to be as I am.