Walter Lippmann Quotes

An air of fashion, which is but a badge of slavery ... proves that the soul has not a strong individual character.

I think you're always policing yourself by trying to do what you think would be "cool" and accepted by other people, until you start to figure out who you really want to be. Growing up is an ongoing push-and-pull of you being yourself and you performing to what society expects you to be.

There's a constant anxiety that comes from having an innate sense of self, yet existing within a homogenised, aspirational culture.

Sure, I could of done it different... put my clown in a closet and dressed up in straight clothing. I could of compromised my essence, and swallowed my soul.

Sometimes you want to dress a certain way... that doesn't always reflect your pedigree.

I suppose one should have an integrated personality, but I've never really seen the point.

You get to an age where you get tired of hiding behind whatever people think is correct.

I've tried not to get too bogged down by what people want you to be.

People sometimes are afraid to be who they are because of other people's ideals.

They tell me what to wear, how to look, what I should say, how I should be. Until recently I had given into that pressure, I lost sight of who I was. I listened to opinions of people and I tried to change who I am because I thought others would accept me for it. And I realized I don't know how to be anything but myself.

Trapped. Sinking. Can't be myself. Made into what other people expect. Is that everyone's fate? Were the great individualists the products of their friends who wanted a great individualist as a friend?

Everyone now, they look back and they're like, "What happened to your sweet image that you used to be?" And I'm like, then when you came out you thought I was too provocative. It's like you can never win. No matter what you do, at the end of the day you can't please everybody, you know. I'm not here to please.

What kind of guilt comes from being true to yourself but not to others?. As we have seen, being true to yourself may at times intrinsically and necessarily be in conflict with being true to others.

If you spend too much time worrying about how other people perceive you, you'll never break the rules.

If one had to worry about one's actions in respect of other people's ideas, one might as well be buried alive in an antheap or married to an ambitious violinist. Whether that man is the prime minister, modifying his opinions to catch votes, or a bourgeois in terror lest some harmless act should be misunderstood and outrage some petty convention, that man is an inferior man and I do not want to have anything to do with him any more than I want to eat canned salmon.

I believe so many people live what I call that false identity they are living according to other people's expectations, associations, their experiences, the labels in life. And they buy into that.

This world is bullshit. And you shouldn't model your life — wait a second — you shouldn't model your life about what you think that we think is cool and what we're wearing and what we're saying and everything. Go with yourself. Go with yourself.

The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves or have listened only to their neighbors to learn what they ought to do, how they ought to behave, and what the values are they should be living for.

You have ideas planted in your head, thoughts you never had before, that tell you how you have to act, how you have to dress and who you have to be. I have been trying to push back, to be authentic, to follow my heart, but it can be hard.

Having to be different is the same trap as having to be the same.

Trying to be cool is the easiest path to mediocrity

The minute you start caring about what other people think, is the minute you stop being yourself.

You can't be a clothes hanger for your entire life.

It's so easy to get caught up in what people expect of you. Sometimes, you can just lose yourself.

If you're trying to be hip, be hip.