Elizabeth Bowen Quotes

Conformity is the ape of harmony.

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.

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

I don't like to be different; I would like to be the same.

Young people in my generation were sort of in lockstep, and it wasn't just the '40s, either. In the '30s and in the '50s it was the same. No one ever dropped out unless he got sick or got kicked out.

I am a believer and a conformist.

Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.

The nail whose head is sticking up get hammered down.

Let us then, dear friends, forever bow down to the general reason of society.

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

I think for me, wearing the helmet and being part of the Stormtroopers felt so strange. Like, so this is what it feels like to just be one of the many. And to look the same, and to have to do the same thing. To be under the same orders. This is what it feels like.

We're all taught to blend in and behave.

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.

It's perfect to be the same as everyone else.

The violence of our time is caused by obedience.

The virtue in most request is conformity.

Schoolchildren make up their own rules and enforce their own conformities. They feel safest when leisure time is rationed and dosed. They like to wear uniforms, and they frown on personal idiosyncrasies. Deviance is the mark of an outsider.

I want everybody to think alike. I think everybody should be a machine.

Society values cooperation over independence, obedience over individuality, and niceness above all else.

People come to New York to be different, but I go to Starbucks to be the same.

It's a metaphor for what we're being told: "Just stay in the box, kid, don't muddy the water." Parents say it to their kids. Teachers say it. Schools do. And so people become immune to the sameness.

I'm naturally quite conformist, really. If I go to a country and they say, "You've got to drive on the right," I'm not going to drive on the left to show that I'm different. I'm able to stick to the law.

All of us are subjected to somebody else's power at some point. So once in a while you kiss ass. So what? Either you make your peace with that early, or you end up living your life as a crank and a misfit.

Obedience, as it regards the social relations, the rules of society, and the laws of nature and nature's God, should commence at the cradle and end only at the tomb.

Conformity may not always reign in the prosperous bourgeois suburb, but it ultimately always governs.