W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

Conforming is not cool.

Unless you hit your television with a sledgehammer, you're not going to be able to be an individual.

There are those whose own vulgar normality is so apparent and stultifying that they strive to escape it. They affect flamboyant behaviour and claim originality according to the fashionable eccentricities of their time. They claim brains or talent or indifference to mores in desperate attempts to deny their own mediocrity.

How can we choose to selectively follow what we find comfortable and attack anybody who tries to break free from the norms that we choose to set?

You have to be a freak in order to be different.

The reason they want you to fit in... is that once you do, then they can ignore you.

The disobedient child is continuously condemned. The obedient child is, on the other hand, continuously praised. But have you heard of any obedient child having become world-famous in any dimension of creativity? Have you heard of any obedient child who has attained the Nobel prize for anything - literature, peace, science? The obedient child becomes just the common crowd. All that is added to existence is added by the disobedient.

Those whose abilities or knowledge incline them most to deviate from the general round of life are recalled from eccentricity by the laws of their existence.

I just don't conform very well.

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

At every point I am besieged by people who would like me to conform to some social norm of whatever sort of social group they expect me to be a part of. I never have any identification with these social groups.

There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.

The idea is not to please the most amount of people. Growing up in Versailles, the idea was to please the least amount of people.

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.

He who goes against the fashion is himself its slave.

It is hard to be an individual in Japan.

To be with the others, you have to have your hair short and wear ties. So we're trying to make a third world happen, you know what I mean?

Rules are made for people who aren't willing to make up their own.

Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime.

I don't believe in societal restrictions. It wasn't a choice - conformity simply never occurred to me.

The reason most people don't express their individuality and actually deny it, is not fear of what prime ministers think of us or the head of the federal reserve, It's what their families and their friends down at the bar are going to think of them.

I'd loved to wear jeans and t-shirts, but everybody was in the peace movement back then. And that was my ploy. I had to be careful not to say things like 'I like meat.' Actually I just wanted to drink beer and to screw.

Now, in music, it seems more like the popular crowd suppresses anyone who is different.

I think a lot of people have lost respect for the individual, you know, the individual, the person who doesn't conform.

Basically, I hate conformity. I hate people telling me what to do. It makes me want to smash things. So-called normal behaviour patterns make me so bored, I could throw up!