Quotes about Nonconformity

Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?

If you really want to be a rebel get a job, cut your grass, read your bible, and shut up. Because no one is doing that.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).

You say that my way of thinking cannot be tolerated? What of it? The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool. My way of thinking is the result of my reflections. It is part of my inner being, the way I am made. I do not contradict them, and would not even if I wished to. For my system, which you disapprove of, is also my greatest comfort in life, the source of all my happiness --- it means more to me than my life itself.

They are trying to make me into a fixed star. I am an irregular planet.

I wasn't in a hurry. I never have to be in any particular place at any particular time. Let time watch me, not me it.

Be you because everyone else is taken!

The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?

I have given them Your word and the world has hated them; for they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

I want to continue being crazy, living my life the way I dream it, and not the way other people want it to be.

I can't think of one great human being in the arts, or in history generally, who conformed, who succeeded, as education experts tell us children must succeed, with his peer group.