George Santayana Quotes

Non-conformity is the only real passion worth being ruled by.

I was seen in earlier years by family members and people of authority as somebody wasting his time. I had trouble with the restrictions of conformity. It made me edgy.

I have a certain temperament, a disposition that I think lends itself to not playing outside the lines that much. But I do test the boundaries, certainly, and break one or two of my own. Some people are mystified by it, but not me.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

I don't care much about conforming.

The inner me was always under attack by authority, by the way my parents wanted me to be brought up, by these English schools I went to. So I've always felt this kind of anti-authoritarian strain in me, pushing to express itself despite the obstacles.

All I want to do is be normal. But really, it's other people who won't let me be that way.

I liked Amy Winehouse a lot. I liked the way she did what she wanted, and she wasn't fazed about the press being on her back. I loved her songs so much.

We all have those friends that tick to their drum, and you don't want them to tick to anybody else's drum.

I thought everybody got into rock 'n' roll because they didn't want to follow instructions.

A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity.

I hate to do what everybody else is doing. Why, only last week, on Fifth Avenue and some cross streets, I noticed that every feminine citizen of these United States wore an artificial posy on her coat or gown. I came home and ripped off every one of the really lovely refrigerator blossoms that were sewn on my own bodices.

If one day I could get out of here, I would allow myself to be crazy. Everyone is indeed crazy, but the craziest are the ones who don't know they're crazy; they just keep repeating what others tell them to.

I hate labels, and I wear no labels. When a man has to put something around his neck and say I am, he isn't.

As much as I live I shall not imitate them or hate myself for being different to them

It was as if he grew his hair long and smoked cigarettes because he liked to, not because he liked being seen to. This was dangerously subversive.

Abnormal, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested.

I'd rather be loud and misunderstood than quiet and bored

Life is, if anything, the art of combination. Of discrimination. Of freely picking one's own personal pattern out of a hundred choices. Not letting it be picked for you—either by the Establishment, or by the Rebels. Conformity of Hip is no better than Conformity of Square.

To conform is to lose your soul

All the great masters in the world have been saying only one thing down the centuries, "Have your own mind and have your own individuality. Don't be a part of the crowd; don't be a wheel in the whole mechanism of a vast society. Be individual, on your own. Live life with your own eyes; listen to music with your own ears." But we are not doing anything with our own ears, with our own eyes, with our own minds; everything is being taught, and we are following it.

I think that I just wasn't brought up under any rules, and I think that made me a little different and people wanted to look up to that or aspire to that, and that makes me very grateful.

The only reason I'm in fashion is to destroy the word conformity.

I'm not much of a conformist.

The voices of conformity speak so loudly. Don't listen to them. No one does the right thing out of fear. If you ever utter the words, 'We've always done it that way,' I urge you to wash out your mouth with soap.