Craig Brown Quotes

Everybody wants to be like everybody else.

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.

When I was a kid, I was afraid of large group of conforming people.

He who goes against the fashion is himself its slave.

Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?

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

Everything's always about being homogenized and following in a group. The people who stand out always have the most problems.

It's a bit weird; everybody is trying to be different, but then they're exactly the same as whatever mob they hang out with.

Or about how when you're a child, to stop you from following the crowd you're assaulted with the line "If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?" but when you're an adult and to be different is suddenly a crime, people seem to be saying, "Hey. Everyone else is jumping off a bridge. Why aren't you?

I grew up in a small town where everyone wanted to be the same or look the same and was afraid to be different.

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

I've always balked at anything that feels like a clique, even if it's not always in my best interest to do so. I like each individual, fedora-wearing hipster - it's just the greater gestalt that rubs me the wrong way.

It is hard to be an individual in Japan.

I didn't want to wear a checked shirt and grow a mustache - that's what you had to do, and everyone did.

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 know how easy it is for some minds to glide along with the current of popular opinion, where influence, respectability, and all those motives which tend to seduce the human heart are brought to bear.

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

The nail that sticks out gets knocked down.

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

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.

You don't have to be the cool party guy, getting everyone's attention.

Everyone was wearing jeans, so I started wearing slacks. I'd walk on, and people would laugh before I got to the mic because I looked stupid.

Being part of a crowd and not standing out is way more frightening than being the person that stands out.

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?

When you're younger, all you want to do is fit in, and then the older you get, you don't want to fit in, you want to stand out.