Stefan Zweig Quotes

Abnormal, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested.

Is anyone human actually normal? I'm beginning to think being normal is actually abnormal.

Normality wasn't normal. It couldn't be. If normality were normal, everybody could leave it alone. They could sit back and let normality manifest itself.

ABNORMAL, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the straiter [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself. Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell.

No one was normal, not really.

Anyone who is different or is slightly out of the norm, is considered crazy.

I just like being a social experiment sometimes. I really should not be allowed in public. But I just go out into the public just to see people's reaction.

The perfect normal person is rare in our civilization.

I am not a normal man.

I always felt like reality was a bizarre place, and everybody was really good at being normal, and I didn't know how to do it.

I think anyone who's willing to be brutally honest with who they are and express themselves is always going to get the oddball label, the pyscho label, the twisted label. That's what happens.

This is common sense. This is nature, and what we're trying to do is defy nature because a certain group of people want to be affirmed by society.

I've always been curious in why different people believe the things they do and do the things they do - in the different ways that people live.

Why do you treat me as they do, as though I were exactly what I want to be. Why do we treat people that way?

As a kid, I was searching for my tribe of other people who saw through the matrix. Even as a kid I could never buy into the status quo. I just thought it was a joke; I couldn't believe other people weren't laughing at it.

We believe in a society in delusion, and if you're awake and not deluded people tell you you're mad. That's why I'm a freak and they're not. But I'm actually not.

Before you can be eccentric, you must know where the circle is.

Either people walk round dressed as chickens or they listen to Beethoven.

People who are different from other people are always called peculiar,' said Anne.

Sanity is not statistical.

If you make a show of going against the times, flaunting your unconventional ideas and unorthodox way, people will think that you only want attention and that you look down upon them.They will find away to punish you for making them feel inferior. It is far safer to blend in and nurture the common touch. Share your originality only with tolerant friends and those who are sure to appreciate your uniqueness.

It is curious to be treated by the old-fashioned people as a criminal because my thoughts and ways are beyond them.

The greater a man's talents, the more marked his idiosyncracies. Yet in the provinces originality is considered perilously close to lunacy.

...if you are not like everybody else, then you are abnormal, if you are abnormal , then you are sick. These three categories, not being like everybody else, not being normal and being sick are in fact very different but have been reduced to the same thing

They yell at me to be dignified. But what are the dignified people like? The people who are held up as examples of me? They are snobs. Frightful snobs I'm a curiosity in Hollywood. I'm a big freak, because I'm myself!