A Quote by John Oliver Killens

What a tiresome place America would be if freedom meant we all had to think alike or be the same color or wear the same gray flannel suit! That road leads to the conformity of the graveyard!
A gray flannel suit by Thom Browne or Tom Ford can be worn a billion ways. I'll wear a gray flannel jacket with a white shirt, gray flannel tie, beat-up fatigues, and a dress shoe or Carpe Diem boots.
I can go all over the world with just three outfits: a blue blazer and gray flannel pants, a gray flannel suit, and black tie.
I think you'd have to be a pretty brave man to say "never go out of style," but men's suiting has been relatively stable for 100 years now. The single-breasted, two-button gray flannel suit, you could've worn it in exactly the same cut, shape and fabric in 1910 as you wear it in 2010.
If you saw me every day, you would actually think I am wearing the exact same gray suit.
I was trying to think the other day about what you do now in America if you want to be successful. Before, you were dependable and wore a good suit. Looking around, I guess that today you have to do all the same things but not wear a good suit. I guess that's all it is. Think rich. Look poor.
I like to wear a lot of one-tone color outfits - same color trousers, same color shirt.
The most important thing that I think we've done this season is to show navy and gray in a very new way. Most men understand navy and gray as a navy blazer and a gray flannel trouser, but today, we're taking that very traditional color palette and putting it in a more modern shape.
There's two ways of dealing with fears of mortality. One of them is to hide, so every day you wear the same suit and go to the same job... and the other is to reinvent yourself. I think I reinvent myself all the time. The idea that I would have to be one thing for the rest of my life would just be a soul-destroying idea.
I always had a lot of fun in America, with much more freedom than if I had tried to cook in France. I wouldn't have the same motivation or inspiration, and I wouldn't have cooked for the same kind of people in France, so it wouldn't have given me this edge I had in America.
We used to look at each other and say, 'We play the same game with the same rules, the same bat, the same ball, the same field. What the hell does color have to do with it? You don't play with color. You play with talent.'
Give half a dozen men the same camera, lenses and plates, and send them to the same place to do the same thing, and all the results will be alike, or so nearly alike as to reveal the real mechanicalness of photography. Yet, curiously enough, this is just one of the most difficult things a photographer can be set to do, to exactly repeat himself, or another. He may use the identical apparatus, know the subject perfectly, and yet be totally unable to bring away an exact replica.
I mean, it feels like a homecoming in a really wonderfully comfortable place to be - the same director, the same musical director, my same dressing room! [laughs] It's a great place to build something with freedom.
One of the many American ideals that make no sense at all is that we're all a million rugged individualists marching in lockstep. We dress accordingly, at least the men. If it's always been thus, I yearn for the halcyon days of the man in the gray flannel suit because at least that guy had some flair.
To require conformity in the appreciation of sentiments or the interpretation of language, or uniformity of thought, feeling, or action, is a fundamental error in human legislation -- a madness which would be only equaled by requiring all men to possess the same countenance, the same voice or the same stature.
Conformity is painful. You know, it's too tight. Conformity leads to rebellion. So a desire for happiness is in direct conflict with a desire for freedom.
In all big cities the style of life is the same. Same endless array of restaurants; same big museums with the usual suspects; same anonymity, which can be thrilling when you're young but which I found got tiresome.
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