A Quote by Mark Twain

Conformity—the natural instinct to passively yield to that vague something recognized as authority.

Mark Twain

Quote Topics

Authority Conformity Instinct Natural Natural Instinct Recognized Something Vague Yield

Quote Author

Mark Twain
American - Writer
November 30, 1835 - April 21, 1910

Yes, I suffer terribly from depression. I have to work at being happy, it's not my natural instinct. My natural instinct is, if something wonderful happens, to throw water in my own face.

Fannie Flagg

Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity.

Maya Angelou

Each of has a natural instinct to rise like a flame. Lets nurture that instinct

Narendra Modi

While to the claims of charity a man may yield and yet be free, to the claims of conformity no man may yield and remain free at all.

Oscar Wilde

…being an atheist required discipline very like that of being Catholic. One could never yield to the idea of a supernatural authority, no matter how often one might be tempted. To think that a personal God had made the world was to yield to a demonic and superstitious and destructive belief.

Anne Rice

Tradition implies authority, conformity, imitation, following.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Without authority there is no liberty. Freedom is doomed to destruction at every turn, unless there is a recognized right to freedom. And if there are rights, there is an authority to which we appeal for them.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

The actor is merely a crude empiricist, a practitioner guided by vague instinct.

Antonin Artaud

I am neither for conformity nor non-conformity. I am for individuality. If one's individuality is in effect non-conformity, then so be it. But basically, one's individuality consists of conformity--to one's self.

Paul Krassner

By learning to yield to the loving authority of his parents, a child learns to submit to other forms of authority which will confront him later in his life — his teachers, school principal, police, neighbors and employers.

James Dobson

I call religion a natural authority, but it has usually been conceived as a supernatural authority.

Herbert Read

The process of philosophizing, to my mind, consists mainly in passing from those obvious, vague, ambiguous things, that we feel quite sure of, to something precise, clear, definite, which by reflection and analysis we find is involved in the vague thing that we start from, and is, so to speak, the real truth of which that vague thing is a sort of shadow.

Bertrand Russell

I think I'm a natural-born leader. I know how to bow down to authority if it's authority that I respect.

Tupac Shakur

I then endeavoured to show that it is more especially in the thorough conformity with law which natural phenomena and natural products exhibit, and in the comparative ease with which laws can be stated, that this difference exists.

Hermann von Helmholtz

...I believe there exists, & I feel within me, an instinct for the truth, or knowledge or discovery, of something of the same nature as the instinct of virtue, & that our having such an instinct is reason enough for scientific researches without any practical results ever ensuing from them.

Charles Darwin

The modern susceptibility to conformity and obedience to authority indicates that the truth endorsed by authority is likely to be accepted as such by a majority of people, who are innately obedient to authority. This obedience-truth will then become a consensus-truth accepted by many individuals unable to stand alone against the majority. In this way, the truth promulgated by the propaganda system - however irrational - stands a good chance of becoming the consensus, and may come to seem self-evident common sense.

David Edward

A Quote by Mark Twain

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors