150 Conventionality Quotes

Following is our list of conventionality quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about not conventional.

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Famous Conventionality Quotes

Conventionality is not morality. — Charlotte Bronte

Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves. — Bertrand Russell

Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally. — John Maynard Keynes

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. — Charlotte Bronte

Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality. — Hannah Arendt

Conformity is the only real fashion crime — Simon Doonan

Conventional wisdom is no wisdom at all. Conventional wisdom is taking somebody else's word for the way things are It's the followers of this world who rely on assumption. Not the leaders. — Richard Marcinko

Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals. — Aldo Leopold

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Conventional wisdom would have one believe. — Mumia Abu-Jamal

Paradoxical, things that seem obvious, broad consensus — Howard Marks

Social consensus is not the same thing as truth. — Balaji Srinivasan

...a consistency proof for [any] system ... can be carried out only by means of modes of inference that are not formalized in the system ... itself. — Kurt Gödel

As a rule, I am very careful to be shallow and conventional where depth and originality are wasted. — Lucy Maud Montgomery

The common-sense notion that 'there is a time and a place for everything' gets carried into a set of prescriptions which replicate the social order by assigning social meanings to spaces and times. — David Harvey

Short Conventionality Quotes

  • The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge right or make good decision. — Alexander Hamilton
  • The only way to get ahead is to find errors in conventional wisdom. — Larry Ellison
  • A kid in an abusive home has far fewer rights than any POW. There is no Geneva Convention for kids. — Andrew Vachss
  • Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. — Arthur Conan Doyle
  • If you are buying into a vacuum of conventional wisdom... the potential to capitalize is enormous. — Cathie Wood
  • I'm a sworn enemy of convention. I despise the conventional in anything, even the arts. — Hedy Lamarr
  • I break away from all conventions that do not lead to my earthly success and happiness. — Anton Szandor LaVey
  • One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one's soul. — W. Somerset Maugham
  • You have to be willing to question conventional wisdom and think for yourself. — Jim Simons
  • The key to success is to risk thinking unconventional thoughts. Convention is the enemy of progress. — Trevor Baylis

Conventionality Image Quotes

Unconventional Quotes

We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living. — Christopher McCandless

Young people get the foolish idea that what is new for them must be new for everybody else too. No matter how unconventional they get, they're just repeating what others before them have done. — Yukio Mishima

No one comes to New York and says 'We've got to check out Times Square and Spa Castle!' — Joe Gatto

A keen sense of humor helps us to overlook the unbecoming, understand the unconventional, tolerated the unpleasant, overcome the unexpected, and outlast the unbearable. — Billy Graham

Love is evil, you'll even love a goat. — Russian Proverbs

I don’t really want to become normal, average, standard. I want merely to gain in strength, in the courage to live out my life more fully, enjoy more, experience more. I want to develop even more original and more unconventional traits — Anais Nin

Establishing and maintaining an unconventional investment profile requires acceptance of uncomfortably idiosyncratic portfolios which frequently appear downright imprudent in the eyes of conventional wisdom. — Howard Marks

Empowered women who reach tough or unconventional positions make CHOICES not sacrifices — Kiran Bedi

I want to make music and songs about things that real musicians and artists aren't able to make songs about - you wouldn't hear Justin Bieber making a song about homework, or, like, you wouldn't see someone make a song with their parents on the track. — Jake Paul

My whole goal in all of high school was to never go to college. — MrBeast

Not Conventional Quotes

If at times my productions do not express the conventionally beautiful, there is always an effort to express the universal beauty of man's continuous struggle to lift his social position and to add dimension to his spiritual being. — Jacob Lawrence

Radical constructivism, thus, is radical because it breaks with convention and develops a theory of knowledge in which knowledge does not reflect an 'objective' ontological reality. — Paul Watzlawick

Cannabis is remarkably safe. Although not harmless, it is surely less toxic than most of the conventional medicines it could replace if it were legally available. Despite its use by millions of people over thousands of years, cannabis has never caused an overdose death. — Lester Grinspoon

A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention. — Aldous Huxley

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own. — Aldous Huxley

Film noir is not a genre. It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood. It is a film 'noir', as opposed to the possible variants of film gray or film off-white. — Paul Schrader

What distinguishes the campaign finance issue from just about every other one being debated these days is that the two sides do not divide along conventional liberal/ conservative lines. — James L. Buckley

As long as people are going to call you lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention. — Gregory Maguire

A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. — James Madison

I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don't have food and water. — Michael Chertoff

Conventional Wisdom Quotes

Conventional wisdom holds that motivation is the key to habit change. Maybe if you really wanted it, you'd actually do it. But the truth is, our real motivation is to be lazy and to do what is convenient. — James Clear

Mainstream media tend to just mouth the conventional wisdom, to see everything through the filter of right and left. — Arianna Huffington

I'm very proud of the Rome episode of 'No Reservations' because it violated all the conventional wisdom about making television. You're never, ever supposed to do a food or travel show in black and white. — Anthony Bourdain

Strings of coincidence can strengthen us in the determination to follow our deepest intuitions even when they run counter to conventional wisdom and logic and cannot be subjected to rational explanation. — Robert Moss

Potentially profitable, nonconsensus forecasts are very hard to believe in and act on for the simple reason that they are so far from conventional wisdom. — Howard Marks

The conventional wisdom is often wrong. — Steven Levitt

All new ideas begin in a non-conforming mind that questions some tenet of the conventional wisdom. — Hyman Rickover

Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage - at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom. — Carl Sagan

Sometimes God gives instructions that go against conventional wisdom, such as treating people kindly when they're hateful. Who really wants to do that? Instructions like that may not always make sense, so that's why I need to trust and obey the One who inspired them. — George Foreman

Contemporary art challenges us.. it broadens our horizons. It asks us to think beyond the limits of conventional wisdom. — Eli Broad

Conventional Ways Quotes

On big issues like war in Iraq, but in many other issues they simply must be multilateral. There's no other way around. You have the instances like the global warming convention, the Kyoto protocol, when the U.S. went its own way. — Hans Blix

One of the more distasteful aspects of positive thinking – and of conventional approaches to happiness in general – is the way in which they seem to encourage self-absorption. — Oliver Burkeman

The absurd, with its rupture of rationality-of conventional ways of seeing the world-is in fact an accurate and a productive way of understanding the world. — William Kentridge

The sexual freedom of today for most people is really only a convention, an obligation, a social duty, a social anxiety, a necessary feature of the consumer's way of life. — Pier Paolo Pasolini

I see worries in the fact that we have the power to manipulate genes in ways that would be improbable or impossible through conventional evolution. We shouldn't be complacent in thinking that we can predict the results. — Colin Blakemore

The 1928 Republican Convention opened with a prayer. If the Lord can see His way clear to bless the Republican Party the way it's been carrying on, then the rest of us ought to get it without even asking. — Will Rogers

Nintendo's way is to challenge conventional thinking. Not just for the sake of doing things differently, but to do things better. — Reggie Fils-Aime

Ordinary life bypassed me, but I also bypassed it. It couldn't have been any other way.Conventional life and conventional people are not for me. — Edna O'Brien

I'm a sworn enemy of convention. I despite the conventional in anything, even the arts. I paint canvasses on the floor and drove one art teacher out of his mind. But that's just the way I paint best. — Hedy Lamarr

In most instances, biotechnology, though a radically different approach, is a sustaining technology: It's a dramatically improved way of targeting problems that we hadn't been able to solve with the conventional approach of mainstream pharmaceutical companies. — Clayton Christensen

Conventional Life Quotes

Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly. — Albert Einstein

A better everyday life means getting away from status and conventions -- being freer and more at ease as human beings. — Ingvar Kamprad

In sci-fi convention, life-forms that hadn't developed space travel were mere prehistory -- horse-shoe crabs of the cosmic scene -- and something of the humiliation of being stuck on a provincial planet in a galactic backwater has stayed with me ever since. — Barbara Ehrenreich

All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children.... I was trying my damnedest to lead a conventional life, for that was how I was brought up, and it was what my husband wanted of me. But one can't build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out. — Anne Sexton

The most important aspect of my personality as far as determining my success goes; has been my questioning conventional wisdom, doubting experts and questioning authority. While that can be painful in your relationships with your parents and teachers, it's enormously useful in life. — Larry Ellison

There is nothing more vulgar than a petty bourgeois life with its halfpence, its victuals, its futile talk, and its useless conventional virtue. — Anton Chekhov

Always listen to yourself. It is better to be wrong than to simply follow convention. If you are wrong, no matter, you have learned something and you will grow stronger. If you are right, you have taken another step toward a fulfilling life. — Bryce Courtenay

Like everything genuine, its inner life guarantees its truth. All works of art created by truthful minds without regard for the work's conventional exterior remain genuine for all times... — Franz Marc

Art is not just ornamental, an enhancement of life. It is a path in itself, a way out of the predictable and conventional... a map to self discovery. — Gabrielle Roth

No one who has lived even for a fleeting moment for something other than life in its conventional sense and has experienced the exaltation that this feeling produces can then renounce his new freedom so easily. — Andre Breton

Constitutional Convention Quotes

Let our government be like that of the solar system. Let the general government be like the sun and the states the planets, repelled yet attracted, and the whole moving regularly and harmoniously in several orbits. — John Dickinson

I am exceedingly distressed at the proceedings of the Convention-being ... almost sure, they will ... lay the foundation of a Civil War. — Elbridge Gerry

I therefore beg leave to move that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning. — Benjamin Franklin

I cannot accept this invitation [to celebrate the bicentenial of the Constitution], for I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever 'fixed' at the Philadelphia Convention... To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start. [Progressive] — Thurgood Marshall

If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed in the Convention where I had the honor to preside might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it. — George Washington

You give me a credit to which I have no claim in calling me "the writer of the Constitution of the United States." This was not, like the fabled Goddess of Wisdom, the offspring of a single brain. It ought to be regarded as the work of many heads and many hands. — James Madison

[The Federal Convention] is really an assembly of demigods. — Thomas Jefferson

No morn ever dawned more favorable than ours did; and no day was every more clouded than the present! Wisdom, and good examples are necessary at this time to rescue the political machine from the impending storm. — George Washington

Outside Independence Hall when the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended, Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, "A republic, if you can keep it." — Benjamin Franklin

I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth — that God governs in the affairs of men. — Benjamin Franklin

Geneva Convention Quotes

It is important to recognize the differences between the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism. The treatment of those detained at Abu Ghraib is governed by the Geneva Conventions, which have been signed by both the U.S. and Iraq. — John Yoo

What is the Geneva Convention on wars! I have never read it. — Yoweri Museveni

Applying different standards to al Qaeda does not abandon Geneva, but only recognizes that the U.S. faces a stateless enemy never contemplated by the Conventions. — John Yoo

The Pentagon said that these prisoners were kept in accordance with the Geneva Convention, and of course I was not reassured by that, but I couldn't prove that that was wrong; so we're clearer about that. — Peter Singer

If we say the Geneva Convention is obsolete, then what do others who have our soldiers say? — Charles Schumer

Nonetheless, Article 5 makes clear that if an Iraqi civilian who is not a member of the armed forces, has engaged in attacks on Coalition forces, the Geneva Convention permits the use of more coercive interrogation approaches to prevent future attacks. — John Yoo

There was a war crimes trial because an American prisoner had been shot trying to escape. He had obviously been recaptured and shot, and that violated the Geneva Convention. — Charles Guggenheim

Under the Geneva Convention, for example, a POW is required only to provide name, rank, and serial number and cannot receive any benefits for cooperating. — John Yoo

This war no longer has anything to do with knightly conduct or with the agreements of the Geneva Convention. — Wilhelm Keitel

The Geneva Convention . . . says that there will be no outrages upon human dignity. It’s very vague. What does that mean, ‘outrages upon human dignity’? — George W. Bush

Conventional Person Quotes

USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion. — Ambrose Bierce

Osama bin Laden, the person, more likely serves the function of a stand-in. Compare the new terrorists with partisans or conventional terrorists in Israel. These people often fight in a decentralized manner in small, autonomous units, too. — Jurgen Habermas

A philistine is a full-grown person whose interests are of a material and commonplace nature, and whose mentality is formed of the stock ideas and conventional ideals of his or her group and time. — Vladimir Nabokov

If you are the kind of person who listens to conservative advice, you may do okay in life, but you probably won't ever be a fantastic leader. You have to take risks, and you also have to go against conventional wisdom, because conventional wisdom doesn't make for startling advances in society. — Ruth Simmons

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that. — Richard P. Feynman

We discard the personal specifics which don't conform to the ideal conventional beauty created by art directors and cinematographers. — Damian Loeb

Therefore, a person should first be changed by a teacher's instructions, and guided by principles of ritual. Only then can he observe the rules of courtesy and humility, obey the conventions and rules of society, and achieve order. — Xunzi

I am a traditionalist, I'm not a conventional person, but I am a traditionalist in the true form of the word, in that your heart is opening, you're absolutely there for everyone, the face of pain has no tradition, by the way, and in my tradition, a guru simply means the removal of darkness. — Maya Tiwari

There are no shortcuts to knowledge, especially knowledge gained from personal experience. Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all. — Ben Horowitz

Cicero's words also increased my personal satisfaction by supporting my long-standing rejection of a conventional point of view. — Charlie Munger

People Writing About Conventionality

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Charlotte Bronte

Charlotte Bronte
quotes on love, writing and friendship

354 1925
Read quotes by Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell
quotes on happiness, life and war

1131 8798
Read quotes by John Maynard Keynes

John Maynard Keynes
quotes on economics, capitalism and government intervention

214 2116
Read quotes by Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt
quotes on evil, power and thinking

261 3698
Read quotes by Simon Doonan

Simon Doonan
quotes on life, education and love

14 119
Read quotes by Richard Marcinko

Richard Marcinko
quotes on leadership, education and success

19 236

More Conventionality Quotes

Within 2 years Im predicting...that youre going to see a suitcase nuke in this country. Youre probably going to see a release in a few years of something communicable. & I am predicting that you will see a lot of conventional bombings...in the next year or so. — Alex Jones

I propose getting rid of conventional armaments and replacing them with reasonably priced hydrogen bombs that will be distributed equally throughout the world. — Idi Amin

My heart can be pasture for deer and a convent for monks, a temple for idols and a Kaaba for the pilgrims. It is both the tables of the Torah and the Koran. It professes the religion of Love wherever its caravans are heading. Love is my law. Love is my faith. — Ibn Arabi

Forget conventionalisms; forget what the world thinks of you stepping out of your place; think your best thoughts, speak your best words, work your best works, looking to your own conscience for approval. — Susan B. Anthony

We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger. — T. S. Eliot

At the very least, participatory involvement with the many forms of art can enable us to see more in our experience, to hear more on normally unheard frequencies, to become conscious of what daily routines have obscured, what habit and convention have suppressed. — Maxine Greene

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune. — Noam Chomsky

Just as fossil fuels from conventional sources are finite and are becoming depleted, those from difficult sources will also run out. If we put all our energy and resources into continued fossil fuel extraction, we will have lost an opportunity to have invested in renewable energy. — David Suzuki

There will definitely be a tribunal for this crime [attack on peaceful Ukrainian Cities]. Internationally. This is a violation of all conventions. — Volodymyr Zelenskyy

The actual state of our knowledge is always provisional and... there must be, beyond what is actually known, immense new regions to discover. — Louis de Broglie

The metaphor of the king as the shepherd of his people goes back to ancient Egypt. Perhaps the use of this particular convention is due to the fact that, being stupid, affectionate, gregarious, and easily stampeded, the societies formed by sheep are most like human ones. — Northrop Frye

The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality. — Florence Nightingale

When the topic of food comes up in conversation with family, friends or casual acquaintances, it’s fascinating to hear the litany of rationalizations, knee-jerk defense mechanisms, self-limiting belief statements and general confusion or ignorance from otherwise intelligent folks when it comes to eating healthfully. But then again, Conventional Wisdom has often led even the best and brightest minds in nutritional science astray. — Mark Sisson

Tonight, I am pleased to announce that I have secured $1 million from the Convention Host Committee to fund the beautification of Boston's neighborhoods. — Thomas Menino

I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions... Don't take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can't. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself. — Noam Chomsky

My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions. As soon as men will find that in one instant, whole armies can be utterly destroyed, they surely will abide by golden peace. — Alfred Nobel

Within 2 years I'm predicting . . . that you're going to see a suitcase nuke in this country. You're probably going to see a release in a few years of something communicable. And I am predicting that you will see a lot of conventional bombings . . . in the next year or so. — Alex Jones

The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work. — Agha Hasan Abedi

I never tell one client that I cannot attend his sales convention because I have a previous engagement with another client; successful polygamy depends upon pretending to each spouse that she is the only pebble on your beach. — David Ogilvy

Start with Gold. Eliminate complexity, corruption, constraint, convention, contention, & inflation. Substitute speed, power, intelligence, equity, ability & accessibility. Finish with Bitcoin. — Michael Saylor

The executions of agents, partisans, saboteurs, suspicious people, indulging in espionage and sabotage, and those who were of a detrimental effect to the German Army, were, in my opinion, completely in accordance with the Hague Convention. — Paul Blobel

Placebo is music for outsiders, by outsiders and our gigs are like conventions of outcasts, which is cool. — Brian Molko

Sanity lies somewhere between the inhibitions of conventional morality and the looseness of extreme impulse, but the area in-between is very fuzzy. — Chogyam Trungpa

The wizards represent all that the true 'muggle' most fears: They are plainly outcasts and comfortable with being so. Nothing is more unnerving to the truly conventional than the unashamed misfit! — J. K. Rowling

Having a Republican candidate speak at the NAACP convention is like trying to build a house starting at the roof. If you don't have a foundation, the roof isn't going to stand. — J. C. Watts

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