Resistance to Conformity Quotes

I'm fundamentally, I think, an outsider. I do my best work and feel most braced with my back to the wall. It's an odd feeling though, writing aginst the current: difficult entirely to disregard the current. Yet of course I shall.

The most depressing thing is the political slogan: there is no alternative. But there is.

Try to keep the rebel artist alive in you, no matter how attractive or exhausting the temptation.

I say let me never be complete, I say may I never be content,I say deliver me from Swedish furniture, I say deliver me from clever arts, I say deliver me from clear skin and perfect teeth,I say you have to give up! I say evolve, and let the chips fall where they may!

I couldn't really be a part of high school, because I have a terrible time doing things that I don't want to do. I'm not good at it. It's not even like, I'm a rebel. I'm just bad at it, you know?

I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I.... I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?

Sometimes you must go against the wheel's turn.

I existed before the mainstream. Why would I join them? I watched the mainstream come up, and now I'm watching it collapse. I don't want to be a part of that.

But I am I. And I won't subordinate my taste to the unanimous judgment of mankind

The point is that we are among those who cannot get their mouths around all the little Yeses that add up to tacit acceptance of a world run by crackpot realists and subject to blind drift. And that, you see, is something to which we do belong; we belong to those who are still capable of personally rejecting. Our minds are not yet captive.

Get used to me, I am not getting used to anyone.

In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility.

This is a world where everybody’s gotta do something. Ya know, somebody laid down this rule that everybody’s gotta do something, they gotta be something. You know, a dentist, a glider pilot, a narc, a janitor, a preacher, all that . . . Sometimes I just get tired of thinking of all the things that I don’t wanna do. All the things that I don’t wanna be. Places I don’t wanna go, like India, like getting my teeth cleaned. Save the whale, all that, I don’t understand that . . .

The struggle is always between the individual and his sacred right to express himself and the power structure that seeks conformity, suppression, and obedience.

I'm a tough old broad from Brooklyn. Don't try to make me into something I'm not. If you want someone to tiptoe down the Barkley staircase in crinoline and politely ask where the cattle went, get another girl.

I have, I believe, the courage to doubt everything; I have, I believe, the courage to fight against everything; but I do not have the courage to acknowledge anything, the courage to possess, to own anything.

one learns best, and writes best, in a state of defiance.

I never would just open a door and walk through, I had to bust it down for the hell of it. I just naturally liked doing things the hard way.

Since the world never faults a man who refuses to yield...it is generally recognized that weak men live in obedience to the world's will, while the strong obey only their own.

Rebellion is necessary for development of character.

Margaret Thatcher has shown that there is power and dignity to be won by defying the status quo and the majority rather than by adapting to them. If the British left, which she froze into immobility like Medusa, could bring itself to learn from this, then we might not have to look upon her like again.

The minute you succumb to outside pressure, you cease to be creative.

Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don't do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl.

By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes to be his duty against the influences of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force.