"In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that no imaginable chance will for a second time gather together into a unity so strangely variegated an assortment as he is: he knows it but he hides it like a bad conscience—why? From fear of his neighbor, who demands conventionality and cloaks himself with it. But what is it that constrains the individual to fear his neighbor, to think and act like a member of a herd, and to have no joy in himself? Modesty, perhaps, in a few rare cases. With the great majority it is indolence, inertia. ... Men are even lazier than they are timid, and fear most of all the inconveniences with which unconditional honesty and nakedness would burden them. Artists alone hate this sluggish promenading in borrowed fashions and appropriated opinions and they reveal everyone’s secret bad conscience, the law that every man is a unique miracle."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations (1876), “Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.1, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 127
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Conformity
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Conformity
85 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Conformity →
Related Quotes
"The power of the culture industry's ideology is such that conformity has replaced consciousness."
"That we have found the tendency to conformity in our society so strong... is a matter of concern. It raises questions…"
"Not only psychiatry itself but also the values reflected in its statistical definition of “normalcy” serve to conditi…"
"There is a socialization which turns curious children into adult automatons in a social environment of repressive uni…"
"Even though no one else discovers the nonconformity or enforces the rules against it, the individual who has committe…"
"The common denominator between all my cartoons is rebellion against blind conformity."
"The only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of conformity."
"Liberation from the heroic only means that they have no resource whatsoever against conformity to the current “role m…"
"Socrates too thought that living according to the opinions of others was an illness. But he did not urge men to look …"
"Resist the pressure to conform. Better be a lonely individualist than a contented conformist."