Rasmus Lerdorf Quotes

Conformity is dangerous.

There are forces working in the world as never before in the history of mankind for standardization, for the regimentation of us all, or what I like to call making muffins of us, muffins all like every other muffin in the muffin tin. This is the limited universe, the drying dissipating universe that we can help our children to avoid by providing them with ‘explosive material capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly'.

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.

How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.

We have to wake up. We have to refuse to be a clone.

There are those who dance to the rhythm that is played to them, those who only dance to their own rhythm, and those who don't dance at all.

I don't care much about conforming.

I didn't care too much for ballet, because you had to be more disciplined, and you sort of looked like everyone else. It required a certain kind of conformity that I didn't feel like I wanted to do.

I don't want to follow the herd.

Whoso would be a man must be a non-conformist.

If I know something's expected of me, I won't wear it or do it. It just seems boring.

The fear that individuality will be crushed out by the growing 'tyranny' of standardization is the sort of myth which cannot withstand the briefest examination.

I don't take well to rules.

I couldn't follow nobody's rules.

We never want to toe the line.

No rebellious heart is ever at ease with paths established by others.

Many people feel they are powerless to do anything effective with their lives. It takes courage to break out of the settled mold, but most find conformity more comfortable. This is why the opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it's conformity.

In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service.

Non-conformity is the only real passion worth being ruled by.

Today we have people who think that they are wild and free and crazy because they are engaging in risky, insane, round-the-clock sex, using drugs, defying everything decent in society. But that's not freedom, is it? That's not even anarchy. What it is, is simple conformity. That's all it really is.

Rebel children, I urge you, fight the turgid slick of conformity with which they seek to smother your glory.

The marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading "Keep Off.

Custom, madam, is the law of fools, but it shall never govern me.

Long live freedom and damn the ideologies.

We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against.