Graham Greene Quotes

Baseball regards us as sheep.

I know the power obedience has of making things easy which seem impossible.

If children were brought up to become non-conformists it would only ruin their lives. So parents all over China who loved their children told them to do as Chairman Mao said. It was not possible to tell them anything else.

Those who know the least obey the best.

Conformity--the natural instinct to passively yield to that vague something recognized as authority.

The voice of authority speaks not for the one but for the many; authority figures have a strong and rapid effect on social norms in part because they change our assumptions about what other people think.

The violence of our time is caused by obedience.

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.

When the whole world is crazy, it doesn't pay to be sane.

The man the state has put in place must have obedient hearing to his least command when it is right, and even when it's not.

Perhaps it would be simpler if you just did what you're told and didn't try to understand things.

Orders can be benign or malign, but the habit of obeying them can become ingrained.

I went to Catholic school. Do as you're told; don't ask questions and you will be illuminated.

Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.

One with the law is a majority.

For years it never occurred to me to question the judgment of those in charge at the studio.

Now that I look back, I realize that a life predicated on being obedient and taking orders is a very comfortable life indeed. Living in such a way reduces to a minimum one's need to think.

I didn't have a dysfunctional childhood or young adulthood, but I was somebody who was very much raised to do what other people told me to do as a person.

I'm fairly obedient. I do what I'm told.

Influence is a very unpleasant subject and I deal with it in a maybe irresponsible way, which is to really ignore it. It would be a nightmare if we started to really think about it; it would tie our hands, it would tie everyone else's hands.

I've always been suspicious of collective truths.

Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.

The hazing experience and then the subsequent participation in the group forces its members to maintain the status quo and traditions at all costs. It demands mindlessness and unquestioned loyalty, resulting in boring people who have little ability to think for themselves or have an opposing viewpoint from those who have the most social power.

Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent.

The nail whose head is sticking up get hammered down.