Hector Hugh Munro Quotes

People tell you what you have to wear and do, and I've never been a fan of it.

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

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

I shall be glad when you have strangled the invincible respectability that dogs your steps.

In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.

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

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.

I was born in Paris in 1950. I had a strict upper-class Catholic education but I never really fitted in the system and revolted against it quite early.

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.

That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.

Moral liberty is the power of following, in all circumstances, our sense of right and wrong, or of acting in conformity to our reflecting and moral principles, without being controlled by any contrary principles.

No iconoclast can possibly escape the severest criticism. …. The world always demands of a prophet a double standard. He must live a life consistent with his dreams, and at the same time must obey the conventions of the world. He cannot be judged either by one or the other, but must be judged by both.

Understand: as children and young adults, we are taught to conform to certain codes of behavior and ways of doing things. We learn that being different comes with a social price.

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?

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

For the more a soul conforms to the sanity of others, the more does it become insane.

Violence represents the worst kind of conformism.

I have an intense dislike for artificial society. In France, one could lead a free life - to do what one wanted to do without interference or criticism from one's neighbors.

I went to public school for like, one day. I don't get it. Everybody tries to be exactly the same. I think being an outsider is a good thing.

It's like, you can't have any fun, and if you do have fun, if you do your own thing, you're considered crazy and should be in a mental institution. Now, that's what I find creepy. I'm eccentric. I am not messed up.

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.

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.

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.