Conformist Behavior Quotes

He who thinks a great deal is not suited to be a party man: he thinks his way through the party and out the other side too soon.

The majority have no other reason for their opinions than that they are the fashion.

What he needed was to find fifty more people like him, who had stopped being themselves without realizing it.

The pressure of an all-powerful totalitarian state creates an emotional tension in its citizens that determines their acts. When people are divided into "loyalists" and "criminals" a premium is placed on every type of conformist, coward, and hireling; whereas among the "criminals" one finds a singularly high percentage of people who are direct, sincere, and true to themselves.

Our dangers ... are not from the outrageous but from the conforming.

When everyone thinks alike, no one is thinking clearly.

The herd instinct among forecasters makes sheep look like independent thinkers.

I never rebelled against my parents - I worked hard, I was responsible, and I didn't go to high-school parties.

Weak minds think alike.

In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself.

The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment.

Very often, unfortunately, people may believe something, but they go along with a group of people because they don't have the courage to stand alone or stand up for themselves.

In an age that is utterly corrupt, the best policy is to do as others do.

We're all taught to blend in and behave.

The public is so in awe of its own opinion that it never dares to form any, but catches up the first idle rumour, lest it should be behindhand in its judgment, and echoes it till it is deafened with the sound of its own voice.

You look like a human being, but you don't have a mind of your own.

We move too much in platoons; we march by sections; we do not live in our vital individuality enough; we are slaves to fashion, in mind and in heart, if not to our passions and appetites.

The women all had big minds because they were big animals, but they didn't use them for this reason: unusual ideas could make enemies and the women, if they were going to achieve any sort of comfort and safety, needed all the friends they could get. So, in the interest of survival they trained themselves to be agreeing machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking and then they thought it too.

Men, generally going with the stream, seldom judge for themselves, and purity of taste is almost as rare as talent.

I'm a sheep when it comes to opinions; I will change my mind and jump on the bandwagon.

A statesman who confines himself to popular legislation - or, for the matter of that, a playwright who confines himself to popular plays - is like a blind man's dog who goes wherever the blind man pulls him, on the ground that both of them want to go to the same place.

Happily for me, ninety-nine percent of all human life is spent simply repeating the same old actions, speaking the same tired clichés, moving like a zombie through the same steps of the dance we plodded through yesterday and the day before and the day before. It seems horribly dull and pointless-but it really makes a great deal of sense. After all, if you only have to follow the same path every day, you don't need to think at all. Considering how good humans are at any mental process more complicated than chewing, isn't that the best for everybody?

Group conformity scares the pants off me because it's so often a prelude to cruelty towards anyone who doesn't want to - or can't - join the Big Parade.

It was fashionable, youre supposed to be a married lady, so I did.

If a man were to look over the fence on one side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his left had laid his garden path round a central lawn; and were to look over the fence on the other side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his right had laid his path down the middle of the lawn, and were then to lay his own garden path diagonally from one corner to the other, that man's soul would be lost. Originality is only to be praised when not prefaced by the look to right and left.