Wendell Phillips Quotes

It is always easy to take a position when society agrees with you. It is hard to take a position that everyone else in society disagrees with.

The opposite of bravery is not cowardice but conformity.

The opposite for courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.

To be one's self, and unafraid whether right or wrong, is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity.

I'm not a follower. I'm a leader. And anyone who speaks their mind is always criticised.

Very few people are original. There's very little original anything out there. Because to be original means you have to stand alone.

If it's anything I can't stand, it's yes-men. When I say no, I want you to say no, too.

Life is a difficult game. You can win it only by retaining your birthright to be a person. And to retain this right, you will have to be willing to take the social or external risks involved in ignoring pressures to do things the way others say they should be done

When I was 16, I was doing what was popular. If I could go back, I would tell myself to not be afraid to be alone and not to follow others so much.

I was always a contrarian.

Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.

Many people feel they are powerless to do anything effective with their lives. It takes courage to break out of the settled mold, but most find conformity more comfortable. This is why the opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it's conformity.

Sometimes you need a little courage too just to buck popular opinion.

Change is freedom, change is life. It's always easier not to think for oneself. Find a nice safe hierarchy and settle in. Don't make changes, don't risk disapproval, don't upset your syndics. It's always easiest to let yourself be governed. There's a point, around age twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities. Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I'm going to go fulfil my proper function in the social organism. I'm going to go unbuild walls.

Who are your heroes? Why do you look up to them? Why do we respect those who live and think for themselves as opposed to doing what is expected? We all admire the idea of living a life unbound by thoughts of fear. People who seem to live that dream inspire us to want to do the same. They mirror the qualities that we possess but are too scared to access.

I hate the idea of always having to interpret other people's ideas and thoughts and words, because I'm very independent and, I guess, a free thinker.

The opposite of courage is not so much fear as it is conformity.

I do not assume to speak for anyone. I know I speak in direct opposition to the wishes of many by whom I am surrounded.

The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one's own convictions - not obstinately or defiantly

Through fear of resembling one another, through horror of having to submit, through uncertainty as well, through skepticism and complexity, there is a multitude of individual little beliefs for the triumph of strange little individuals.

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

If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you

No matter how much a young man likes to think for himself, he is always trying to model himself on some abstract pattern largely derived from the example of the world around him. And a man, no matter how conservative, shows his own worth by his personal deviation from that pattern.

When I was in fourth grade, we were learning vocabulary words, and the word nonconformist came up. The teacher said, "It's somebody who whatever everybody is doing, they do the opposite." I remember raising my hand and saying, "Mrs. Christiansen, I would like to be a nonconformist."

Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist.