Herman Wouk Quotes

In the age of the individual's liquidation, the question of individuality must be raised anew.

You know, our sense of individuality is just the number one target of civilization.

You don't have to make yourself look like people expect you to look.

I'm sick of people putting boxes around everyone, telling you where and how you have to fit in.

No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.

I think if human beings had genuine courage, they'd wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. Wouldn't life be more interesting that way? And now that I think about it, why the heck don't they? Who made the rule that everybody has to dress like sheep 364 days of the year? Think of all the people you'd meet if they were in costume every day. People would be so much easier to talk to - like talking to dogs.

Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.

I keep saying, 'Don't change. Be who you are,' but society is really strong in their opinions.

If you have the expectation that I have to be a certain way, then I feel the obligation to be that way. The truth is I am not what you want me to be.

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

one of the blessings of adulthood is that one is no longer addressed as a thing.

Who are they to judge us, simply because our hair is long?

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!

People come to New York to be different, but I go to Starbucks to be the same.

There is a certain expectation of girls to eventually grow up and behave and fall in line. I've always bucked against that.

If you want to be different nowadays, just act normal.

Fear of what other people will think is the single most paralyzing dynamic in business and in life. The best moment of my lifewas the day I realized that I know longer give a damn what anybody thinks. That's enormously liberating and freeing, and it's the only way to live your life and do your business.

How I grew up, everybody was telling me, "You can't do this, you can't get tattoos, you've got to look a certain way." Now, I'm like, "Why?"

I got tired of doing battle with people thinking I was a little weird because I wasn't in a band making happy, stilted music. The only people who really seem weird to me are people who think they're normal. People who think it's possible to be normal just by doing the same things that most people do. Is there a most people? I don't know. Television makes it seem like there is, but I think that might just be television.

The fact was, by the time she got to high school, being weird and proud of it was an asset. Suddenly cool, Blue could've happily had any number of friends. And she had tried. But the problem with being weird was that everyone else was 'normal'".

We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against.

Fainthearted animals move about in herds. The lion walks alone in the desert. Let the poet always walk thus.

What! I don't care about being a princess! And since I'm already a young lady, how else could I behave? That's like asking a fish not to swim!" ~Princess Eilonwy, daughter of Angharad, daughter of Regat, of the Royal house of Llyr

I can be happy with who I am, not what I should be, or what I might have been, or what someone tells me I must be.

You may have to live in a crowd, but you do not have to live like it.