Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

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.

You see something happen to a population whereby everyone adopts something that's just preposterous in a way that makes it normal instantly. If any one person prior to the rash of puka shells, for example, was seen wearing puka shells, he would look like an idiot. But when everyone is wearing them, it instantly makes them normal.

Few people can resist doing what is universally expected of them. This invisible pressure is more difficult to stand against than individual tyranny.

We all feel the urge to conform; it is the most normal of human desires.

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

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

We were born in this society, we grew up in this society. And we learn to be like everyone else, playing nonsense all the time.

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

The only law which is really lived up to wholeheartedly and with a vengeance is the law of conformity.

Just because so many conforming kids wake up every morning asking, 'What is everybody else going to wear today?' doesn't mean that they don't wish it were different. Peer pressure is just that: pressure.

Society is a republic. When an individual tries to lift themselves above others, they are dragged down by the mass, either by ridicule or slander.

To do exactly as your neighbors do is the only sensible rule.

The only behaviour that is truly common is to avoid doing something because you think others might consider it common.

A big element of what they regard as conformity is simply a desire to have an audience.

Most people live their life around what other people do.

You might as well play at the show everyone else is playing at.

The world chooses to think what the world thinks.

Everybody wants to be like everybody else.

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 felt that there were so many people doing it that I would just be like one of the others.

What is seen being done by the many soon obtains the force of custom; while the affairs of men have scarcely ever been so well regulated that the better things pleased the majority. Therefore, the private vices of the many have often caused public error, or rather a general agreement on vices, which these good men now want to make law…

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

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

When in doubt, look at what everyone else is doing.

What is social proof? Put simply, it's the positive influence created when someone finds out that others are doing something. It's also known as informational social influence.