Veronica Roth Quotes

Human beings never think for themselves. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told - and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.

In a society that tries to standardize thinking, individuality is not highly prized.

Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society…

Whence all this passion toward conformity anyway? – diversity is the word. Let man keep his many parts and you'll have no tyrant states . Why, if they follow this conformity business they'll end up by forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a color but the lack of one. Must I strive toward colorlessness? But seriously, and without snobbery, think of what the world would lose if that should happen. America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.

To be different is not necessarily to be ugly; to have a different idea is not necessarily to be wrong. The worst possible thing is for all of us to begin to look and talk and act and think alike.

Ideation is not a synonym for innovation, conformity is not its simple antonym, and innovation is not the automatic consequence of "creative thinking.".

We already have so much pressure towards sameness through radio, film and comic outside the school, that we can't afford to do a thing inside that is not toward individual development.

It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.

But when the group is literally capable of changing our perceptions, and when to stand alone is to activate primitive, powerful, and unconscious feelings of rejection, then the health of these institutions seems far more vulnerable than we think.

Call it stubborn, call it ignorant, call it what you want, but I don't think I have to join a particular faith or culture or creed or religion just to fit in.

I've never believed it's really so important that you conform to the ways of the system in order to beat the system. I think that the system follows a great deal.

I think anything you do that's different, that doesn't take the typical approach, invites differing opinions.

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

Perhaps even more than constituted authority, it is social uniformity and sameness that harass the individual most. His very "uniqueness," "separateness" and "differentiation" make him an alien, not only in his native place, but even in his own home. Often more so than the foreign born who generally falls in with the established.

According to one influential wing of modern secular society there are few more disreputable fates than to end up being 'like everyone else' for 'everyone else' is a category that comprises the mediocre and the conformist, the boring and the suburban. The goal of all right-thinking people should be to mark themselves off from the crowd and 'stand out' in whatever way their talents allow.

The constant pressure to bring about conformity is a dangerous thing.

Thinking about how disturbingly herdlike people become in so many different contexts - mimetic theory forces you to think about that, which is knowledge that's generally suppressed and hidden. As an investor-entrepreneur, I've always tried to be contrarian, to go against the crowd, to identify opportunities in places where people are not looking.

The born-yesterday French-besotted faddists, addicted sniffers of wet printer's ink, think they're starting on the ground floor; so they're condemned to another hundred years of trial and error. The rest of us can safely ignore them.

I think they were scared of me because I was different. I've always asked, 'Why? Why do I have to do that? Why do I have to look this way? Why do I have to dress this way? Why do I have to behave this way?'

Look,' he said, 'I don't think we should continue this discussion. I don't like this side of you.' 'I'm not a box,' she said 'I don't have sides. This is it. One side fits all. This is it.

I just try to be myself and not conform to something I'm not and just continue doing what I do. I just try not to think about the fact that I'm an inspiration for people.

A citizen sticks to conventions, does whatever is social. Artists, of course, must reject all conventions. I see no differently in reconciling the best of both of these worlds.

For the more a soul conforms to the sanity of others, the more does it become insane.

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 . . .

Violence represents the worst kind of conformism.