Suppression of Individuality Quotes

The human race is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it.

For the Fascist, everything is the State, and nothing human or spiritual exists, much less has value, outside the State. In this sense Fascism is totalitarian.

Academia is ruled by a pathological herd mentality. Stick out, and be prepared to get ostracized.

People are so codified - it's sad.

There was this kind of dictatorship of the Darmstadt school, composers like Boulez and Stockhausen, who were very strict and orthodox. They would not allow other composers to write the music they wanted to write, and only a certain kind of music could be played.

When a man can take a poll and tell what everybody is thinking, that means nobody is really thinking anymore.

This I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.

Growing up in a small town, in the Midwest, and Catholic - those are sort of three layers of repression.

Conformity is dangerous.

Men had better be without education than be educated by their rulers; for their education is but the mere breaking in of the steer to the yoke; the mere discipline of the hunting dog, which, by dint of severity, is made to forego the strongest impulse of his nature, and instead of devouring his prey, to hasten with it to the feet of his master.

Some cultures tried to stop people from expressing themselves. In Mao's China, for example, the Communists tried to stop individual expression. For them the payoff was a society of equality. The problem of course is that it didn't work.

Most ideologies of the world are not for the individual. They're against the individual. Communism, fascism. Any kind of an ism - almost - they're against the individual.

Most people resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers

The East Coast, and certainly Boston, has a provincial quality to it that makes it harder to bust out and move up. Try to be too different and they'll pull you down.

We're herded into schools and terrified into behaving. Taught how we're supposed to pretend to be, taught to parrot all kinds of nonsense at the flick of a switch, taught to keep our heads down and our elbows in and shut off our minds and shut off our sex. We learn we can't even piss when we have to. That's how we learn to be plastic and dumb.

I was sucked into this vortex of a very conservative upbringing.

We came to realise - first with astonishment, then bitterness, and finally with indifference - that intellect apparently wasn't the most important thing...not ideas, but the system; not freedom, but drill. We had joined up with enthusiasm and with good will; but they did everything to knock that out of us.