Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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.

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.

You want to be yourself, idiosyncratic; the collective (school, rules, jobs, technology) wants you generic to the point of castration.

I cannot change the world, but I do not have to conform.

I'm certainly not who people think I am. I always do whatever I want to do, and my films are personal to me.

I'm aware that I'm very fringe, and it's nice that way.

The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.

You were once wild here. Don't let them tame you.

I refused to conform to an image that a lot of people thought a president's brother should adopt.

You pay a certain penalty for going your own way. A lot of people think you're nuts, and you're not as popular with girls as you should be.

With a small town mentality, you make a decision very early on as to whether you are going to do everything by the book or just go your own way and not care.

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.

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.'

The creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept.

I have never felt the constraints of social acceptability.

I pride myself on breaking any box that anyone wants to put me in.

I don't care much about conforming.

If I gave a damn what other people think of me, I would be more like other people.

I'm not part of any movement; I don't like being fettered.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I'd rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me.

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.

I just live my own life, and I don't read any of the magazines.

I thought one should have the attitude of 'What do you care what other people think!'

I've always kind of known what I like and what I don't. And never felt any pressure to wear certain things or watch certain things... It's hard to explain, but I've just always felt it.

I'd just like to inspire people to be themselves and do what they want and not conform to the rigid guidelines of the music or entertainment business.