Conformity — Philosophical Quotes
Fromm noticed something strange about modern freedom: people couldn't wait to get rid of it. Given the chance to think for themselves, they'd rather follow orders, buy what everyone else buys, believe what's easiest to believe. Orwell showed the endpoint of that impulse in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Grass wrote about an entire generation that chose not to remember. Conformity doesn't always look like obedience. Sometimes it looks like comfort.
31 quotes from 13 voices: Hannah Arendt, Albert Camus, Erich Fromm, bell hooks, Franz Kafka, Simone de Beauvoir, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Virginia Woolf, Herbert Marcuse, Günter Grass, George Orwell, Václav Havel, Rollo May.
- “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convi...” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
- “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their min...” — Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind
- “Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little conn...” — Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
- “I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolut...” — Albert Camus, The Stranger
- “People never change their lives, that in any case one life was as good as ano...” — Albert Camus, The Stranger
- “The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identic...” — Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom
- “I am often struck by the dangerous narcissism fostered by spiritual rhetoric ...” — bell hooks, All About Love
- “In the struggle between yourself and the world, second the world.” — Franz Kafka, The Zuerau Aphorisms
- “The oppressor would not be so strong if he did not have accomplices among the...” — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
- “Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to ...” — Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
- “Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
- “The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.” — Virginia Woolf, Monday or Tuesday
- “A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced ...” — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man
- “The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in...” — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man
- “Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.” — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man
- “The criterion for free choice can never be an absolute one, but neither is it...” — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man
- “The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have ...” — Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation
- “Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.” — Günter Grass, The Tin Drum
- “Believing and devouring — a peculiarly German process.” — Günter Grass, The Tin Drum
- “Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than f...” — Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
- “So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so pain...” — Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
- “In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us: Make us you...” — Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
- “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” — George Orwell, Animal Farm
- “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respect...” — George Orwell, Politics and the English Language
- “Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings t...” — Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless
- “The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meanin...” — Václav Havel, Letters to Olga
- “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their min...” — Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind
- “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convi...” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
- “Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than f...” — Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
- “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.” — Rollo May, Man's Search for Himself
- “Loneliness is such an omnipotent and painful threat to many persons that they...” — Rollo May, Man's Search for Himself