Mark Twain Quotes

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

In our society, no one dares to be themselves.

Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, Corn-Pone stands for Self-Approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is Conformity.

Just being ourselves is the biggest fear of humans. We have learned to live our life trying to satisfy other people's demands. We have learned to live by other people's points of view because of the fear of not being accepted and of not being good enough for someone else.

The problem is that we humans are deep conformists.

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.

Men are herd animals, and prefer to go with the flow, especially when moving in the other direction is harsh.

Society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal impulses and preferences.

The idea that men are created free and equal is both true and misleading: men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to be like each other.

A society which emphasizes uniformity is one which creates intolerance and hate.

In an over-organized society, the individual is altogether crushed out of existence. He gains the whole wealth of social thought around him and loses his own soul.

When people are free to do as we please, they usually imitate each other.

The human race is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it.

You don't realize you're vying for the approval of everyone so much until being yourself is not approved of.

I always knew who I was, but everyone else wanted to me to be their 'idea' of the 'right' artist. At times, I even believed them.

People say things they'll never do but then do them because they want to be a part of 'this great thing.'

When we find ourselves in groups or with charismatic individuals, we might do things we wouldn't ordinarily do.

When you're in a friend circle, you all kind of talk the same way. And it's hard to do on-the-fly radio edits of yourself.

As teenagers, we go through social, emotional and physical changes... and sometimes, to feel comfortable, we end up doing things that are not true to who we are just to fit in and feel loved.

I've always hated the feeling of trying to be cool or trying to fit in.

The more backwoodish a social group, juvenile or adult, the stricter its conception of the normal, and the readier it will ridicule any departure from it.

In a society in which it is a moral offense to be different from your neighbor your only escape is to never let them find out.

If one considers how much reason every person has for anxiety and timid self-concealment, and how three-quarters of his energy and goodwill can be paralyzed and made unfruitful by it, one has to be very grateful to fashion

Society will be obeyed; if you refuse obedience, you must take the consequences. Society has only one law, and that is custom. Even religion itself is socially powerful only just so far as it has custom on its side.

Men are sheep. Where one goes, the rest will soon follow. -Lady Whistledown