Sandra Bernhard Quotes

Slackers might look like the left-behinds of society, but they are actually one step ahead, rejecting most of society and the social hierarchy before it rejects them. The dictionary defines slackers as people who evade duties and responsibilities. A more modern notion would be people who are ultimately being responsible to themselves and not wasting their time in a realm of activity that has nothing to do with who they are or what they might be ultimately striving for.

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 do what I want. Everybody does what he likes. What is so unique about it?

I'm very much of an individual myself, and I do things sometimes that the next person probably won't, or wouldn't, do because they're not me.

You don't want other people to tell you what to do your whole life. And if you feel like shaving your hair off, then you just do it.

I chose my own path because that was the only way.

You just gotta live your life and do it your way.

I don't ever wanna be mainstream.

I got the idea [for Anthem's theme] in my school days, in Soviet Russia, when I heard all the vicious attacks on individualism, and asked myself what the world would be like if men lost the word 'I.'

It was as if he grew his hair long and smoked cigarettes because he liked to, not because he liked being seen to. This was dangerously subversive.

Punk became a circus didn't it? Everybody got it wrong. The message was supposed to be: Don't follow us, do what you want!

I learned the word non-conformist in fourth grade and immediately announced that I would grow up to become one.

To be an individual is the hardest thing in the world, because nobody likes you to be an individual. Everybody wants to kill your individuality and to make a sheep out of you. Nobody wants you to be on your own.

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

There's a lot of romance to sort of living by your own rules and sort of not subscribing to what society tells you to do, but society pushes back pretty strongly, so there's a lot of compromise that goes with that.

Nobody wants to feel they're not a rebel.

Question authority; think for yourself. Talk to people, do things unrelated to school - to come up with your own framework for living. The world is too complex and people are too different to be overly prescriptive about the details.

I don't really give a f**k about the mainstream. The mainstream doesn't offer me anything. Why would I offer it anything? I love the world I have. I love the sort of subculture that Green Day represents.

I love the freedom to do whatever I want with style and not be put into a box.

I don't hold myself dictated to by what everyone is saying, by the tabloids or popular opinion. I don't like bourgeois values. I say you find your own way to live.

I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine.

I'm very big on doing my own thing.

You don't have to burn books, you don't have to rebel against teachers to rebel; to rebel is to truly own your own self.

I never thought of punk rock as the absolute act of rebellion for the sake of rebellion. There's a lot of that in there, but for me I think punk rock was always about questioning things and making decisions for yourself, which is a great message to pass on to your kids.

I have a hard time doing anything someone else tells me to do! I've always been driven to follow my own path and not be pushed down another lane because some executive thought I could be more commercially successful or whatever.