11 Quotes About the Dangers of Conformity From Smart People

Conformity comes with consequences

The world will give you a thousand good reasons to conform; acceptance, protection, approval, love, friendship, stability, affiliation… The list goes on. What’s more, these reasons will come from all quarters, from parents, schools, teachers, corporations, bosses, police and the government, all willing to readily explain why you should stick to the rules they dictate.

But it’s your life, not theirs.

You weren’t born to blend in. Life isn’t just about getting through it, head down. Conformity comes with side effects; each time you toe the line you’re choosing someone else’s standards to live up to whilst simultaneously killing off the uncountable number of ways to be yourself.

Still, don’t trust my words, I’m just (looks in the mirror) one guy. Instead, trust the words of those smarter and more enlightened than I am.

Here are 12 quotes about the dangers of conformity from the wise and learned to help you break from the shackles of expectation.

Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains. —Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was an eighteenth-century philosopher, composer and one of those serious-looking wig-guys who seemed to be great at everything. A polymath.

This quote gets right to the heart of the matter: We are born free. Free!

Why then, do so many of us end up in chains, beholden to a boss, working jobs we hate to pay for lives we find uninspiring? Why do we enslave ourselves?

It’s a sad but understandable fact that people don’t want freedom, they want safety. So we shackle ourselves through conformity and sell off our dreams to the highest bidder (salary). Rousseau saw it everywhere.

The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it’s conformity. — Rollo May

This quote is attributed to many people, including Dr Robert Anthony, Rockson Gracie and Earl Nightingale, but it is existential psychologist Rollo May who actually wrote it in his book The Courage to Create.

It’s a mind-blower. It reframes working a steady job not as provision, not as something noble and righteous, but as cowardice.

Playing it small is fear-based, and conformity, by definition, is all about playing it small.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people. – Virginia Woolf

Living a lie is more common than we think. Many go to work, sit in an office and become a corporate cog but do it “ironically” — with a sense of self-awareness — as if this means they’re not really like everyone else doing the same thing. But of course… they are.

We lie to ourselves about what we want and who we could be because it’s easier and more convenient to fit in. Worse, the longer we lie, the more we forget, the quieter our intuition becomes and we end up living a life confused and disconnected from truth.

Can you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be? —Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski knows a thing or two about conformity; he worked a menial job in the post office for years and hated it. He dabbled on the side in booze and writing and eventually broke free from conformity through his art. It’s a heady tale that stained Bukowski’s mind; he raged against routine labour, social expectation and the pressure to fit in his whole literary life. This wonderful quote is the tip of his lengthy deconstruction of conformity.

If I lean towards conformity I will be crushed by mediocrity. – Geoff Thompson

Thompson is a British playwright and spiritual teacher, a remarkable man who said he wants to share with the world every epiphany that’s been bestowed upon him. Here is a simple line, an innocuous sentence in one of his books, but it holds giants truths within its humility.

Conforming is, by its very nature, mediocre. God, the universe, your life force – whatever phrase you want to use – wants you to be great. It doesn’t want you crushed under the burden of fitting in. It wants you to fly free using every bit of potential it granted you.

A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him. – Ezra Poind

Conformity is the abdication of responsibility. It’s not heroic to forego your dreams to earn a buck, that’s the easy way out. The hero’s journey begins with denying a call to action, it doesn’t end there. Just because you dream of freedom, a better life, fame, riches, power, doesn’t mean you’re special. Everyone does. The office drones and manual labourers, the doctors, nurses and patients, the politicians and the poets are all dreamers. It’s those who answer the call that are heroic. Everyone else is a slave, dreaming about the time when someone else – who has answered their own call – comes and saves them.

And those who were dancing were thought insane by those who could not hear the music. – Friedrich Nietzsche

There are two common reactions towards people who are “free”; some draw inspiration from them but most hate them. They represent daring and courage absent in the hearts of their haters. And they know it.

Free people are mocked, ostracised and hated because they are a mirror to the cowardice inside others. And the haters cannot understand the mad choice this free person has made. They’ve done the same equation in their head and come up with the opposite decision; these free individuals have rejected the so-called benefits of conformity and therefore must be insane.

There’s no passion to be found in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living. – Nelson Mandela

Mandela’s words come with the weight of years of contemplation behind them; decades of thinking about life’s meaning from a prison cell. If he tells us settling is the wrong choice, I choose to believe him.

Here he points out something we often dismiss because it seems trite, that we are capable of great things and unless we pursue this greatness, life will be devoid of passion. You cannot grow into full potential conforming to the expectations of those around you.

So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality, nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit. – Christopher McCandless

McCandless was the 20-something who burned all his money and went adventuring around the open road of America to experience life in all its raw glory. His adventure, or misadventure, in this case, cost him his life, but does this mean his words here are hollow or any less true?

Security and predictability is a false sense of peace, it’s avoidance of the work we have to undertake for real peace. Living authentically takes work, takes adventure, takes faith and takes risk. You can’t shortcut your way to inner peace through conformity, though most of us try.

The world wants to assign you a role in life. And once you accept that role you are doomed. – Robert Greene

Source. Nail-on-head stuff here by Greene. Society wants working drones to contribute to taxes, work in factories and drive buses. It doesn’t want penniless artists, comedians, musicians, dreamers, drug takers, activists or free-thinkers. The economy must have stability and predictability. You need to be a cog in the machine, lest it falls apart.

There’s a vested interest in governments and schools to push you into the world of work so you contribute. Falling out of school and into college, then out of college and into work is the easiest, most well-lit, predictable and encouraged path there is. They don’t care about your dreams, they care about your resourcefulness. They will put you in a box all your life if you let them.

The reward for conformity is that everyone likes you but yourself. – Rita Mae Brown

Ending on this banger. This is what it comes down to. No one cares if you, or I, are unhappy. If you’re sick, there’s healthcare, if you need protection, there’s police and the laws of the land. But if you have a pervasive sense of ennui and can’t turn off the light at night without hating yourself for living a lie, no one will help you. No one cares about that. Happiness, authenticity, self-actualisation, all these lofty ideas are your sole responsibility. Even your parents will want you to get a stable job and settle down.

Ultimately, the warm glow of acceptance from others will turn cold. You must generate your own heat to find peace. All the smiles and pats on the back in the world won’t save you from yourself. We all have to face who we really are, sometime. The longer you wait, the more painful that reckoning will be. Be true to yourself now. Why wait?

In Closing

I’m yet to find anyone wise, considered and accomplished who doesn’t espouse the benefits of beating your own path. The world is full of nay-sayers, and as Arnold Schwarzenegger said, “Don’t listen to them”. They come as wolves in sheep’s clothing, found ten a penny in offices, families, pubs and comment sections of the internet. These types don’t want you to achieve anything else it makes them look bad. No one wants their boat rocked. Instead, draw inspiration from the heady, free-thinking outliers. They’re living close to the truth, close to authenticity. And that’s where the real answers lie. In your truth. Remember, conformity is addictive — don’t abuse it.