Bill Buford Quotes

Most people live their life around what other people do.

Teach him to think for himself? Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people!

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

The enemy of individuality is groupthink.

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

Conformity is dangerous.

Not easily may an individual escape the deep slavery of the herd.

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

Why should we pay so much attention to what the majority thinks?

I'd rather look ridiculous when everybody else does than plain and sensible all by myself.

Failing conventionally is the route to go; as a group, lemmings may have a rotten image, but no individual lemming has ever received bad press

Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth.

You may have to live in a crowd, but you do not have to live like it.

If we attach more importance to what other people believe than to what we know to be true - if we value belonging over being - we will not attain authenticity.

Crowds create illusions.

Mankind are a herd of knaves and fools. It is necessary to join the crowd, or get out of their way, in order not to be trampled to death by them.

A crowd of grade-three thinkers, all shouting the same thing, all warming their hands at the fire of their own prejudices, will not thank you for pointing out the contradictions in their beliefs. Man is a gregarious animal, and enjoys agreement as cows will graze all the same way on the side of a hill.

Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.

The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.

I've been amazed at how fast and herd-like opinions in the United States are.

The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.

Acceptance of prevailing standards often means we have no standards of our own.

Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form the headless monster, a great, brutish idiot that goes where prodded.

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.