Paul Gauguin Quotes

We live in a world that tells us not to care, to consume everything in sight. It tells us that being cool and being an individual actually means buying what everyone else is buying and doing what everyone else is doing.

We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.

Mankind are a herd of knaves and fools. It is necessary to join the crowd, or get out of their way, in order not to be trampled to death by them.

Because other people are fools, must you be so too?

Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.

The mob gets out of hand, runs wild, worse than raging fire, while the man who stands apart is called a coward.

I see that being looked at askance as a form of elitism now, which is really scary.

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

Those who talk about individuality the most are the ones who most object to deviation, and in a few years it may be the other way around. Some day everybody will just think what they want to think, and then everybody will probably be thinking alike; that seems to be what is happening.

She's as plastic as you are. If you ever have kids, they'll come out of the birth canal with Fisher-Price stamped on their butts.

Everybody's private motto: It's better to be popular than right.

You can't please everyone. Just because I don't behave a certain way, some folks will say you don't have any street cred. I've pretty much had to put up with that since I was a little kid, just because I was raised to communicate in a certain fashion. Some people didn't like it.

In England you're skewered on the altar of pop culture if you become pretentious.

Everything was becoming allegorical, understood by the group mind, and especially this: "You're either on the bus...or off the bus.

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.

To go nowhere, follow the crowd.

The mass of mankind are evidently slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts.

If we attach more importance to what other people believe than to what we know to be true - if we value belonging over being - we will not attain authenticity.

Stop talking about the way things are, unless you like them.

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue who says my hand a needle better fits.

Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.

People are just waiting around to get certified.

We are all of us, more or less, the slaves of opinion.

If 20,000 people start to sing, you tend to go along with it.