Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes

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.

People watch movies - and it's vague ideas, it's vague notions, but people pick up on these things, that they are supposed to think certain ways or that they're not supposed to think, basically, and they don't.

Culture has worked by coming to exercise a form of mind control over us. We willingly accept and even embrace this mind control, and probably without even knowing it.

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

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

It is long since I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value.

The enemy of individuality is groupthink.

Everywhere you look, there's someone doing your thinking for you and telling you what to think and when to think of it.

Just because everybody else does something isn't a good enough reason to do anything.

Conformity is dangerous.

People are so brainwashed by the rules that they don't know what really matters.

Human beings never think for themselves. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told - and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.

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.

The kids are not brought up to have minds of their own as individuals.

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.

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

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.

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

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

I don't like to be different; I would like to be the same.

It is hard to be an individual in Japan.

One isn't born one's self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people's ideas - and you have to work through it all.

In the age of the individual's liquidation, the question of individuality must be raised anew.

Whenever you see people talking about how real they are or how normal they are, it seems odd to have that self awareness that you could potentially not be normal.

He who integrates is lost.