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Nonconformity Quotes

Quotes tagged as "nonconformity" Showing 1-30 of 104
Seth Godin
“The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.

Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.

The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it's a job.

Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.

I call the process of doing your art 'the work.' It's possible to have a job and do the work, too. In fact, that's how you become a linchpin.

The job is not the work.”
Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

Juan Ramón Jiménez
“If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.”
Juan Ramón Jiménez, Invisible Reality

Jerry Spinelli
“It's in the morning, for most of us. It's that time, those few seconds when we're coming out of sleep but we're not really awake yet. For those few seconds we're something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and something of them and their world still clings to us. For those few moments we are unformed, uncivilized. We are not the people we know as ourselves, but creatures more in tune with a tree than a keyboard. We are untitled, unnamed, natural, suspended between was and will be, the tadpole before the frog, the worm before the butterfly. We are for a few brief moments, anything and everything we could be. And then...and then -- ah -- we open our eyes and the day is before us and ... we become ourselves.”
Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“I know the feelings of my heart, and I know men. I am not made like any of those I have seen; I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different. Whether Nature has acted rightly or wrongly in destroying the mould in which she cast me, can only be decided after I have been read.”
Jean Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

Margaret Mitchell
“Make up your mind to this. If you are different, you are isolated, not only from people of your own age but from those of your parents' generation and from your children's generation too. They'll never understand you and they'll be shocked no matter what you do. But your grandparents would probably be proud of you and say: 'There's a chip off the old block,' and your grandchildren will sigh enviously and say: 'What an old rip Grandma must have been!' and they'll try to be like you.”
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

Albert Einstein
“It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.”
Albert Einstein

Friedrich Nietzsche
“Giving style” to one’s character - a great and rare art! It is exercised by those who see all the strengths and weaknesses of their own natures and then comprehend them in an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason and even weakness delights the eye.”
Friedrich Nietzsche

Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“Most people do not have a problem with you thinking for yourself, as long as your conclusions are the same as or at least compatible with their beliefs.”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Criss Jami
“Any fool can do something cool and look cool, but it takes skill to make something uncool cool again.”
Criss Jami, Killosophy

Seth Godin
“At the age of four, you were an artist. And at seven, you were a poet.”
Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

“If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it’s another nonconformist who doesn’t conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity.”
Bill Vaughan

Edward Abbey
“I took the other road, all right, but only because it was the easy road for me, the way I wanted to go. If I've encountered some unnecessary resistance that's because most of the traffic is going the other way.”
Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

“A truly good person will speak truth, act with truth, and stand for Truth. A truly good person is not afraid to think from their heart; therefore, allowing nonconformist decisions, viewpoints, and perspectives to lead their life. By following their heart, they stand with their conscience, and only with God.”
Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

Sei Shōnagon
“185. It Is Getting So Dark
I am the sort of person who approves of what others abhor and detests the things they like.”
Sei Shōnagon, The Pillow Book

Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“Most people believe most of the things they believe only because they believe that most people believe them.”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Thomas à Kempis
“A sure way of retaining the grace of heaven is to disregard outward appearances, and diligently to cultivate such things as foster amendment of life and fervour of soul, rather than to cultivate those qualities that seem most popular.”
Thomas à Kempis, The Inner Life

Gautama Buddha
“Yes, Kālāmas, it is proper that your have doubt, that you have perplexity, for a doubt has arisen in a matter which is doubtful. Now, look you Kālāmas, do not be led by reports, or traditions, or hearsay. Be not led by the authority of religious texts, not by the delight in speculative opinions, nor by seeming possibilities, not by the idea: 'this is our teacher'. But, O Kālāmas, when you know for yourself that certain things are unwholesome, and wrong, and bad, then give them up... And when you know for yourself that certain things are wholesome and good, then accept them and follow them.”
The Buddha

Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“If unconventional ideas = sperm, then public opinion = abortion.”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Ron Paul
“But let it not be said that we did nothing. Let not those who love the power of the welfare/warfare state label the dissenters of authoritarianism as unpatriotic or uncaring. Patriotism is more closely linked to dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security. Understanding the magnificent rewards of a free society makes us unbashful in its promotion, fully realizing that maximum wealth is created and the greatest chance for peace comes from a society respectful of individual liberty.”
Ron Paul

Michael Pollan
“Seeds have the power to preserve species, to enhance cultural as well as genetic diversity, to counter economic monopoly and to check the advance of conformity on all its many fronts.”
Michael Pollan, Second Nature: A Gardener's Education

Hilary McKay
“He likes driving very fast on the wrong side of the road," said Sarah. "Which I can completely understand.”
Hilary McKay, Saffy's Angel

R.C. Sproul
“The simplistic way of not conforming is to see what is in style in our culture and then do the opposite. If short hair is in vogue, the nonconformist wears long hair. If going to the movies is popular, then Christians avoid movies as “worldly.” The extreme case of this may be seen in groups that refuse to wear buttons or use electricity because such things, too, are worldly.

A superficial style of nonconformity is the classical pharisaical trap. The kingdom of God is not about buttons, movies, or dancing. The concern of God is not focused on what we eat or what we drink. The call of nonconformity is a call to a deeper level of righteousness, that goes beyond externals. When piety is defined exclusively in terms of externals, the whole point of the apostle’s teaching has been lost. Somehow we have failed to hear Jesus’ words that it is not what goes into a person’s mouth that deflies a person, but what comes out of that mouth. We still want to make the kingdom a matter of eating and drinking.”
R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God

Phil Hine
“The system loves resistance. Resistance is often creative and it feeds on creativity until the subversive becomes just another pre-packaged lifestyle on special offer. So Cease to Resist. Relax and enjoy the PandaemonAeon. Believe everything and anything. Seek not proof, but take pleasure in your choice of belief. Wipe that superior sneer of your face and try smiling (if only inwardly) at the people/institutions/beliefs that you've waged your personal war against. Wouldn't it be more fun if you didn't run around quite so hard trying to be an individual, or fighting to prove or uphold your chosen belief-system?”
Phil Hine, Rebels & Devils; A Tribute to Christopher S. Hyatt

Donna Woolfolk Cross
“This was the price for the the strange life she had chosen, but she had gone into it with eyes open, and there was no profit in regret.”
Donna Woolfolk Cross, Pope Joan

Ralph Waldo Emerson
“For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend’s parlour. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Émile Zola
“Never subject to the rules, believing that the correct judgement and healthy nature keep her in the honesty she lived in.”
Émile Zola, The Ladies' Paradise

Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“You cannot really not care about what other people think of you and still wear a perfume or cologne.”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Abhijit Naskar
“All The World's An Asylum (Sonnet 1235)

All the world's an asylum,
All the people are lunatics.
Some are but loonies of love,
Some loonies run by prejudice.

Some die running in love of currency,
Some die sharing the currency of love.
Beyond the grasp of dollar and euro,
Love is the only nonvolatile
currency in the world.

It's good to be a loonie,
If the reason is justly humane.
When human welfare is at stake,
It's only logical to be insane.

Sane, insane - be as the need arises,
To hell with the judgment of nitwits!
In an organic world no sanity is absolute,
Boldly walk the spectrum as the purpose fits.”
Abhijit Naskar, Insan Himalayanoğlu: It's Time to Defect

Abhijit Naskar
“Unleash your unsubmission,
and character unfolds.
Once character unfolds,
civilization unfolds.”
Abhijit Naskar, Yarasistan: My Wounds, My Crown

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