Peer Pressure Quotes

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”
― Bruce Lee

“Why aren't you in school? I see you every day wandering around."
"Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing 'chicken' and 'knock hubcaps.' I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Confidence is knowing who you are and not changing it a bit because of someone’s version of reality is not your reality.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.”
― V.S. Naipaul

“Be yourself. Don't worry about what other people are thinking of you, because they're probably feeling the same kind of scared, horrible feelings that everyone does.”
― Phil Lester

“A bad conscience is easier to cope with than a bad reputation.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“It doesn’t matter if I’m off the beat. It doesn’t matter if I’m snapping to the rhythm. It doesn’t matter if I look like a complete goon when I dance. It is my dance. It is my moment. It is mine. And dance I will. Try and stop me. You’ll probably get kicked in the face.”
― Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing: The Best of Year One

“Stay true to yourself. An original is worth more than a copy.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“The ordinary procedure of the nineteenth century is that when a powerful and noble personage encounters a man of feeling, he kills, exiles, imprisons or so humiliates him that the other, like a fool, dies of grief.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“The tyranny of public opinion (and what an opinion!) is as fatuous in the small towns of France as it is in the United States of America.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“At any given point you can release your greatest self. Don’t let anyone hold you back. Don’t let anyone dilute you. Don’t be peer pressured into being less than you are. People willing to dilute themselves for the sake of others is one of the great tragedies of our time. Stop letting others define and set the pace for your life. Get out there and be your best. Do your best. Live your best. Make every day count and you’ll see how exponentially more exciting, thrilling, successful, happy and full your life will be.”
― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

“Tact is the ability to help someone out or show them something they need to know without hurting their feelings. Your aunt and uncle may be a bit old fashioned. You can learn from that. But you may also need to help them. They don’t usually have children stay with them. You will really need to use tact with them. Okay? And here, take this. If your aunt or uncle need something, use ‘tact’ and buy it for them.”
― R. Gerry Fabian, Just Out Of Reach

“She was starting to think that it might be fun to be in control of the universe.”
― Nicki Elson, Three Daves

“Life is not a list of checkboxes that we have to tick off sequentially one after another. Got a degree? Tick. Booked a house under my name? Tick. Got married? Tick. Had Children? Tick. All this sound too cliché, too depressing. These are acts which people do under the influence of peer pressure, mimicking each other, and not willingly as a genuine choice of their own.”
― Abhaidev, That Thing About You

“Most people want so desperately to be an individual yet are so easily shaped by the media.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Nowadays, ads don't just sell a product. They sell an attitude! Look at this one! Here's a cool guy saying nobody tells him what to do. He does whatever he wants and he buys this product as a reflection of that independence. So basically, this maverick is urging everyone to express his individuality through conformity in brand-name selection?”
― Bill Watterson, There's Treasure Everywhere

“Be yourself because an original is worth more than just a copy.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Although initially only few in numbers, it seems my gray hairs have launched an effective peer-pressure campaign intended to convert the others.”
― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

“They were completely vague. They expressed everything and nothing. 'It is the Æolian harp of style,' thought Julien. 'Amid the most lofty thoughts about annihilation, death, the infinite, etc., I can see no reality save a shocking fear of ridicule.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“Conformity is not an admirable trait. Conformity is a copout. It threatens self-awareness. It can lead groups to enforce rigid and arbitrary rules.”
― Alexandra Robbins, The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School

“Traditions are just peer pressure from dead people.”
― Eliot Schrefer, Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality

“It was the fact that they tried so hard that doomed them.”
― Alexandra Robbins, The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School

“If schools celebrated student scientists the same way they celebrate student athletes, more students would be encouraged to pursue the subject. Instead, science is considered nerdy because schools help students to paint it that way.”
― Alexandra Robbins, The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School

“It's like we're all trying so hard to be something special that we forget it's okay to just be ourselves.”
― Nicoleclaire C., Guardians of Glyndor: The Disappearing Creatures

“Something kills human societies when they get successful. Most likely, it is socializing: humans gather in groups, decide that they dislike reality, and create an alternative reality instead, then enforce it through peer pressure. This is usually a response to the means-over-ends approach of jobs and control which value obedience over reality.

When humans socialize, they converge on the lowest common denominator, namely the desire for each person to be a god in his own little world. He wants his desires to take precedence over the whole of reality. Socializing replaces nature as the environment to which humans adapt, and so individualism becomes accepted as real.”
― Brett Stevens

“The temptation to compromise comes more often from the fear of rejection than from the promise of power.”
― Jamie Arpin-Ricci

“As children we’re instructed to ‘live well’ and strive to ‘be the best we can be.’ But we’re rarely encouraged, in good faith, to contemplate—for ourselves—what living well and being our personal best actually mean for us … as individuals.”
― Sol Luckman, Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality

“Social Commitments: Turn a solitary goal into a social contract. If you want to ensure you hit the gym, agree to meet a friend there on specific days. Knowing someone is waiting for you creates a commitment that is harder to break than a promise to yourself alone.”
― Kevin L. Michel, The Council of Gods

“Fashion is one of the greatest forms of manipulation.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman