John Stuart Mill Quotes

In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service.

But now that she had achieved knighthood, and thought and acted as she wanted and decided, for one has to act in this way in order to save this world, she neither noticed nor cared that all the people around her thought she was insane.

I was seen in earlier years by family members and people of authority as somebody wasting his time. I had trouble with the restrictions of conformity. It made me edgy.

The mark of our time is its revulsion against imposed patterns.

I don't care much about conforming.

I was anti-conformist.

No rebellious heart is ever at ease with paths established by others.

If they ask you to stand still, you should dance.

Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of 'the rat race' is not yet final.

People need to learn how to work, learn how to support themselves. I think it's just fine to be eccentric.

Why let them order you about? Why let them tell you to hurry and scurry like ants or maggots? Take your time! Saunter a while! Enjoy the sunshine, enjoy the breeze, let life carry you at your own pace! Don't be slaves of time, it's a helluva way to die, slowly, by degrees...down with the Ticktockman!

In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.

Long live freedom and damn the ideologies.

I don't like authority, at least I don't like other people's authority.

I go out and I say and do what I want - even if people may find that shocking. One could, of course, decide to be suffocated by all the pomp here in Élysée Palace. But if you decide to resist it, then you won't be suffocated.

Some people dye their hair yellow or put rings in their noses. I decided I wasn't going to open an account. Put it the other way round - there was no reason that I should.

In order to exist, man must rebel.

By no means. I have just given you my serious and well-considered profession of faith. Although a firm friend of order, I am (in the full force of the term) an anarchist. Listen to me.

Be independent of the good opinion of other people.

The minute I was told what to do at any age, I did the opposite. Hopefully I'll do that for the rest of my life.

I'm quite contrary. If people agree on something, I tend to gravitate the other way by my nature. I don't like to be told what to do. I think it goes back to school. I like to do things I want to do and I really don't like doing what I don't want to do.

I grew up with my cousins, who were as close as brothers, and frankly, I didn't like what girls were expected to do. I liked horseback riding, playing football, going to rodeos. I wanted to be in jeans all the time, and I couldn't figure out why I was supposed to conform to a certain standard, so I didn't.

I don't care what other people think.

Where's your will to be weird?

Don't care what people say. Don't give a damn about their laws.