Non Conforming Quotes

Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.

The lower you fall, the higher you'll fly.

You’ll learn, as you get older, that rules are made to be broken. Be bold enough to live life on your terms, and never, ever apologize for it. Go against the grain, refuse to conform, take the road less traveled instead of the well-beaten path. Laugh in the face of adversity, and leap before you look. Dance as though EVERYBODY is watching. March to the beat of your own drummer. And stubbornly refuse to fit in.

My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. "Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?" they asked me the other day. I told them this story: In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me...I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you...you're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest." So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day.

Nature held me close and seemed to find no fault with me.

In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.

But human beings are not machines, and however powerful the pressure to conform, they sometimes are so moved by what they see as injustice that they dare to declare their independence. In that historical possibility lies hope.

The greatest achievement is selflessness. The greatest worth is self-mastery. The greatest quality is seeking to serve others. The greatest precept is continual awareness. The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything. The greatest action is not conforming with the worlds ways. The greatest magic is transmuting the passions. The greatest generosity is non-attachment. The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind. The greatest patience is humility. The greatest effort is not concerned with results. The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go. The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.

Society demands conformity at the expense of individual liberty. Let us be for once a non conformist to be fully alive.

Non-conformity is the only real passion worth being ruled by.

We must beware of yielding to the pressure of a spirit of cowardly conformity which proclaims itself everybody's friend in the hope that everybody will obligingly return the compliment.

Most people believe most of the things they believe only because they believe that most people believe them.

Unreasonable," "unrealistic," and "impractical" are all words used to marginalize a person or idea that fails to conform with conventionally expected standards.

Conformism and non-conformism are symmetrical expressions of a lack of originality.

I'm not here to be small, to compare, to judge (myself or you), to fit in or to be perfect. I'm here to grow, to learn, to love, to be human.

I can’t change the world, I can only change how I choose to live in it.

Shapers” are independent thinkers: curious, non-conforming, and rebellious. They practice brutal, nonhierarchical honesty. And they act in the face of risk, because their fear of not succeeding exceeds their fear of failing.

If what you create seems to turn out much stranger than who you are as a person, it's probably because your heart is talking.

WHAT YOU DON’T DO DOESN’T MATTER

If, living in the world, you refuse to be a part of it, you will help others out of this chaos - not in the future, not tomorrow, but now.

What if you save for 40 years, putting off all kinds of opportunities, then get hit by a bus the day before retirement? Better to plan for the future while also living in the present.

By acquiescing in an act that causes such suffering to a living creature, who among us is not diminished?

Conformity requires us to minimize our differences for the greater good. We fear that if we don't conform, we will be abandoned, but there is no loneliness like having people only see you after you've erased yourself.

When I was really small I thought I’d do anything to change whatever was wrong with me. Now I didn’t want to change, I just wanted people to stop being mad at me all the time.

When we really get serious about our insecurities, we usually find that three specific fears emerge: the fear of failure, the fear of success, and the fear of change.

The scrutiny on our bodies distracts us from what's really going on here: control. The emphasis on our appearance distracts us from the real focus: power.

Some gender non-conforming people are nonbinary, and some are men and women. It depends on each person’s experience. Two people can look similar and be completely different genders. Gender is not what people look like to other people; it is what we know ourselves to be. No one else should be able to tell you who you are; that’s for you to decide.

For a long while I have believed – this is perhaps my version of Sir Darius Xerxes Cama’s belief in a fourth function of outsideness – that in every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed, who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world semi-detached, if you like, without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race; that there may even be millions, billions of such souls, as many non-belongers as belongers, perhaps; that, in sum, the phenomenon may be as “natural” a manifestation of human nature as its opposite, but one that has been mostly frustrated, throughout human history, by lack of opportunity. And not only by that: for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainly, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not really feel, we hide our secret identities beneath the false skins of those identities which bear the belongers’ seal of approval. But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks. What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or a movie theater, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our palaces of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveler, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time.

She was an extraordinary person too! Would you believe it, she cut her hair short, and used to go about in men’s boots in bad weather

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader. —JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

If, living in the world, you refuse to be a part of it, you will help other out of this chaos - not in the future, not tomorrow, but now.

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: you have no one to blame. —ERICA JONG

Gender non-conforming people face considerable distress not because we have a disorder, but because of stigma and discrimination. There is nothing wrong with us, what is wrong is a world that punishes us for not being normatively masculine or feminine.

Once, I ordered two thousand lady bugs from the local garden center and set them loose in the atrium. I sprinkled marigold seeds in the ficus planters and put gold fish in the lobby fountain. These are things I did with no consequences, no repercussions. My nineteen detentions were for smart answers and missed homework. There is no equivalent punishment for making the world a stranger place.

People say that what we’re seeking is a meaning for life,” he began before clarifying, “I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. What we seek is an experience of being alive.

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.

Gender non-conformity is seen as something immature, something we have to grow out of to become adults.

Conform or die. That was his motto. I am oddly doing bits of both, each half-assedly.

Arguments against gender non-conforming people are about maintaining power and control. Most can be grouped into four categories: dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope.

How are you supposed to be believed about the harm that you experience when people don't even believe that you exist? The assumption is that being a masculine man or a feminine woman is normal, and that being "us" is an accessory. Like if you remove our clothing, our makeup, and our pronouns, underneath the surface we are just men and women playing dress-up.

Gender non-conforming people are not opportunisitic; we are oppressed.

They strike one, above all, as giving no account of themselves in any terms already consecrated by human use; to this inarticulate state they probably form, collectively, the most unprecedented of monuments; abysmal the mystery of what they think, what they feel, what they want, what they suppose themselves to be saying.

You don’t have to live your life the way other people expect you to.

ROBERT ROTH: Going against the tide, no matter how gracefully, will beat you up after a while — all artists know this.

11 WAYS TO BE UNREMARKABLY AVERAGE 1. Accept what people tell you at face value. 2. Don’t question authority. 3. Go to college because you’re supposed to, not because you want to learn something. 4. Go overseas once or twice in your life, to somewhere safe like England. 5. Don’t try to learn another language; everyone else will eventually learn English. 6. Think about starting your own business, but never do it. 7. Think about writing a book, but never do it. 8. Get the largest mortgage you qualify for and spend 30 years paying for it. 9. Sit at a desk 40 hours a week for an average of 10 hours of productive work. 10. Don’t stand out or draw attention to yourself. 11. Jump through hoops. Check off boxes.

A free society cherishes nonconformity. It knows that from the non-conformist, from the eccentric, have come many of the great ideas of freedom. A free society fertilizes the soil in which non-conformity and dissent and individualism can grow.

This repression is something we first did to ourselves. We know how to do it so well to other people because we were the first testing grounds. We silenced our own differences, subdued our creativity, and toned down our own gender non-conformity in order to fit in. We thought fitting in would give us security—but is it security when someone else living their life differently unsettles us to our very core?

No one knows, at sight a masterpiece. And give up verse, my boy, There's nothing in it. Likewise a friend of Bloughram's once advised me: Don't kick against the pricks, Accept opinion. The Nineties tried your game And died, there's nothing in it.

Imagine everyone you encounter all day long telling you that you are not real and that there is something fundamentally wrong with you. Being constantly invalidated takes a toll: 40 percent of trans and gender non-conforming people have attempted suicide.

From the cave to the skyscraper, from the club to weapons of mass destruction, from the tautological life of the tribe to the era of globalization, the fictions of literature have multiplied human experiences, preventing us from succumbing to lethargy, self-absorption, resignation. Nothing has sown so much disquiet, so disturbed our imagination and our desires as the life of lies we add, thanks to literature, to the one we have, so we can be protagonists in the great adventures, the great passions real life will never give us. The lies of literature become truths through us, the readers transformed, infected with longings and, through the fault of fiction, permanently questioning a mediocre reality. Sorcery, when literature offers us the hope of having what we do not have, being what we are not, acceding to that impossible existence where like pagan gods we feel mortal and eternal at the same time, that introduces into our spirits non-conformity and rebellion, which are behind all the heroic deeds that have contributed to the reduction of violence in human relationships. Reducing violence, not ending it. Because ours will always be, fortunately, an unfinished story. That is why we have to continue dreaming, reading, and writing, the most effective way we have found to alleviate our mortal condition, to defeat the corrosion of time, and to transform the impossible into possibility.

Genius is non-conformity.

The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader." - Quoting Derek Sivers

It's a surreal experience to have your personhood be reduced to a prop.

People judge gender non-conformity because they are insecure about their identities. If they weren’t, then gender variance wouldn’t be so heavily policed.

The concept of deferred gratification, or sacrificing now to save for the future, can be helpful in setting aside money in a retirement account for old age. It can also serve as an effective rationalization for life avoidance.

my top five core values are non-conformity, self-reliance, kindness, honesty, and courage.” “Top five of how many total?” “Twelve.” I can’t see his smile, but I can feel it. “Let’s have the rest.” “Curiosity. Freedom. Persistence. Learning. Humor. Gratitude. Solitude.

...for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainty, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not really feel, we hide our secret identities beneath the false skins of those identities which bear the belongers' seal of approval. But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celbrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks. What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or movie theatre, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our palaces of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveller, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time.

At a fundamental level, we are still having to argue for the very ability to exist. The truth is, I still cannot go outside without being afraid for my safety. There are few spaces where I do not experience harassment for the way I look.

The rise of Milo, Trump and the alt-right are not evidence of the return of the conservatism, but instead of the absolute hegemony of the culture of non-conformism, self-expression, transgression and irreverence for its own sake – an aesthetic that suits those who believe in nothing but the liberation of the individual and the id, whether they’re on the left or the right. The principle-free idea of counterculture did not go away; it has just become the style of the new right.

We silenced our own differences, subdued our creativity, and toned down our own gender non-conformity in order to fit in.

It's because of my grandfather that I became a Young Avenger. But it's hard sometimes, to be a black kid carrying a name like "Patriot". I remember talking to Captain America about before he died, and he explained what Patriotism meant to him... It wasn't about blindly supporting your government. It was about knowing what your country could be, what it should be... And trying to lead it there through your example. And holding it accountable when it failed. I remember he said: "There's noting patriotic about corruption or cover-ups... or defending them. But exposing them, well, that takes a hero.

If your organization is not formally committed to a policy of nondiscrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression or gender presentation in its employment practices, you should not expect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender-nonconforming, queer, and/or questioning patients and families to feel safe seeking out your services.

Here’s to the misfits and foolish ones who think differently. They’re not fond of simplicity. They live unconventionally existing at a different level of intensity. They add elasticity and flexibility to what’s inflexibly rigid, bringing warmth to the frigid systems of existence. You can hate them acidicly, discredit their credibility or even oppose them ritualistically. Look down on them cynically, say they became great accidentally, rain on them torrentially or see brilliance academically. You can look and see density or see a lovely symphony. About the only thing you can’t do is disqualify their eligibility. Because they change history. Everything in existence moves them restlessly on to destiny backed by infinity. Their spirit is immensity, they overcome resiliently and follow their hearts existentially. Though they may be misunderstood until the next century, we see their opponents’ adrenaline as only minimally convincing, simply for a time because in them there’s a tendency for the divine to visit earth coincidentally. And while others may see misfits and foolishness we see wisdom and genius because the ones crazy enough to think they can live and love limitlessly are the ones who actually do.

The truth is, that we are in a state of emergency. In the past few years, we have seen an onslaught of legislation... targeting gender non-conforming people... Our communities are under attack. Regardless of whether these pieces of legislation pass, the fact that they're even being considered suggests just how disposable we are considered to be.

Psychologists discovered that there are two routes to achievement: conformity and originality. Conformity means following the crowd down conventional paths and maintaining the status quo. Originality is taking the road less traveled, championing a set of novel ideas that go against the grain but ultimately make things better.

The impetus that makes you fly is the great store of humanity that each of us possesses. It's the feeling of interconnectedness with the roots of all power, but we soon get alarmed by it! It's damned dangerous! And so most people are glad to give up flying; they prefer walking on the sidewalk, following the rules and regulations.

All the girls and women looked pretty much the same, so did all the boys and men. I couldn't find myself among the girls. I had never seen any adult woman who looked like I thought I would when I grew up. There were no women on television like the small woman reflected in this mirror, none on the streets. I knew. I was always searching.

One can resist the invasion of an army, but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas. —VICTOR HUGO

I’ve taken off for long runs in dozens of world cities without a map or any knowledge of the local language.

Always do what you are afraid to do. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Non-Conformity The path of non-conformity never takes the shortest distance between two points. It's convoluted like our prefrontal cortex.

If a minority culture doesn't accept you as much as majority culture, think about following a path of non-conformity

Our goal is more modest: We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.

It is sad how often love and acceptance are conditional on how well we can conform. That even in the smallest acts of gender non-conformity, love can be lost.

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy. —DALE CARNEGIE

You can’t keep a good woman down who sucks at being subservient.

The real crisis is not that gender non-conforming people exist, it's that we have been taught to believe in only two genders in the first place.

For all their talk of democracy, the conquerors worked hard to engineer consensus; and on many critical issues, they made clear that the better part of political wisdom was silence and conformism. So well did they succeed in reinforcing this consciousness that after they left, and time passed, many non-Japanese including Americans came to regard such attitudes as peculiarly Japanese.

Mede stood accused of heresy. He had been seen out on the fields pointing an instrument at the Sun, a device, they said, for measuring distances. He had been trying to measure the distance between the earth and God.

It is deeply conservative to suggest that any sufficiently difficult woman from history -- say, one who rebelled against the constraints of femininity by dressing and acting in a masculine way -- must have been a man.

Now that you have a bit of respect, you value your standing in the group and don’t want to jeopardize it. To maintain and then gain status, you play a game of follow-the-leader, conforming to prove your worth as a group member. As

From time to time our national history has been marred by forgetfulness of the Jeffersonian principle that restraint is at the heart of liberty. In 1789 the Federalists adopted Alien and Sedition Acts in a shabby political effort to isolate the Republic from the world and to punish political criticism as seditious libel. In 1865 the Radical Republicans sought to snare private conscience in a web of oaths and affirmations of loyalty. Spokesmen for the South did service for the Nation in resisting the petty tyranny of distrustful vengeance. In the 1920's the Attorney General of the United States degraded his office by hunting political radicals as if they were Salem witches. The Nation's only gain from his efforts were the classic dissents of Holmes and Brandeis. In our own times, the old blunt instruments have again been put to work. The States have followed in the footsteps of the Federalists and have put Alien and Sedition Acts upon their statute books. An epidemic of loyalty oaths has spread across the Nation until no town or village seems to feel secure until its servants have purged themselves of all suspicion of non-conformity by swearing to their political cleanliness. Those who love the twilight speak as if public education must be training in conformity, and government support of science be public aid of caution. We have also seen a sharpening and refinement of abusive power. The legislative investigation, designed and often exercised for the achievement of high ends, has too frequently been used by the Nation and the States as a means for effecting the disgrace and degradation of private persons. Unscrupulous demagogues have used the power to investigate as tyrants of an earlier day used the bill of attainder. The architects of fear have converted a wholesome law against conspiracy into an instrument for making association a crime. Pretending to fear government they have asked government to outlaw private protest. They glorify "togetherness" when it is theirs, and call it conspiracy when it is that of others. In listing these abuses I do not mean to condemn our central effort to protect the Nation's security. The dangers that surround us have been very great, and many of our measures of vigilance have ample justification. Yet there are few among us who do not share a portion of the blame for not recognizing soon enough the dark tendency towards excess of caution.

Islamic legal rulings stipulate that a treaty cannot be forever, since it must be immediately void should the Muslims become capable of fighting them.” What these treaties did not imply was a permanent system in which the Islamic state would interact on equal terms with sovereign non-Muslim states: “The communities of the dar al-harb were regarded as being in a ‘state of nature,’ for they lacked legal competence to enter into intercourse with Islam on the basis of equality and reciprocity because they failed to conform to its ethical and legal standards.” Because in this view the domestic principles of an Islamic state were divinely ordained, non-Muslim political entities were illegitimate; they could never be accepted by Muslim states as truly equal counterparts. A peaceful world order depended on the ability to forge and expand a unitary Islamic entity, not on an equilibrium of competing parts.

The acceptance of authority is caused by disturbance and disorder. The effect is the authority, and the reaction to that is to conform or to deny. This very denial assumes another form of authority. Where there is no freedom, there must be authority. This brings about suppression, control or escape, and the very movement of these culminates in a principle or belief, a standard which assumes dominance. The cause is never permanent; the cause becomes the effect and the effect becomes the next cause. When this is clearly understood, not intellectually but actually, then the negation of this chain is freedom. Knowledge has its own authority-experience and memory. But as long as one remains within that field, the creative movement of freedom is non-existent. Freedom is space, and space is order.

So I get a little tired of having to swallow my lived experience to be force-fed someone else's what-ifs. I get tired of my safety coming second. I get tired of the realities of trans and gender non-conforming people's lives being overshadowed and ignored in favour of a boogey-man that might be lurking in the ladies' room. I get really tired of being mistaken for a monster. I get tired of swallowing all these bathroom stories and smiling politely. But the last thing I can do is allow myself to get angry. Because if I get angry, then I am seen as even more of a threat. Then it's all my fault, isn't it? Because then there is a man in the ladies' room, and for some reason, he's angry.

If you're wonderful in any way somebody will fuck with you. Just like if you're horrible in any way they're gonna fuck with you. The world is for the average and the common. Those are the people who never hurt - they just fall asleep. The rest of us, we're The Walking Wounded.

Non ; cette fois j’ai gagé que je t’emmènerais ; allons, viens, mauvaise tête, et ne trouble le plaisir de personne. Chacun son tour ; c’était hier le tien, aujourd’hui tu es passé de mode ; celui qui ne sait pas se conformer à son sort est aussi fou qu’un vieillard qui fait le jeune homme.

If you’re stuck in the cage, it’s time to smash the glass around you and crawl your way out. You don’t need anyone’s permission to climb the ladder, and you don’t need to apologize for escaping. If the sleepwalking life is the “real world” of the unremarkably average, the clear alternative is the living world of adventure.

In a sense the dramatic dialogue is both the fullest symbol and the final justification of the city's life. For the same reason, the most revealing symbol of the city's failure, of its very non-existence as a social personality, is the absence of dialogue-not necessarily a silence, but equally the loud sound of a chorus uttering the same words in cowed if complacent conformity. The silence of a dead city has more dignity than the vocalisms of a community that knows neither detachment nor dialectic opposition, neither ironic comment nor stimulating disparity, neither an intelligent conflict nor an active moral resolution. Such a drama is bound to have a fatal last act.

The very essence of Australia is our lack of sophistication–our refusal to conform to pretension and superficiality. We ought to be upholding our ‘fair-dinkumness’ and all the qualities so well documented in our folklore, the non-conformity of the swagman in Waltzing Matilda whose down to earth motto would I’m sure, have been ‘I’d rather be ignorant and fair dinkum than sophisticated and false’. Of course life has been a fight against ignorance, but the danger has always been that gaining knowledge rarely occurs without an increase in sophistication or falseness.

God, as represented in Scripture, by nature, is the true non-conformist. He does not need to conform to any truth; He does not need to conform to some moral law. It proclaims that He is the Truth; He defines Morality: the Great I Am, the Beginning and the End who radiates all that is Holy. Therefore, and unless we too were wholly holy and omniscient, we would do well to understand at the very least that even if this God were to wipe away all in existence, then despite my opinion or your opinion, His decision would be objectively good and moral simply because He is the one doing it.

essence of Buddhism: The greatest achievement is selflessness. The greatest worth is self-mastery. The greatest quality is seeking to serve others. The greatest precept is continual awareness. The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything. The greatest action is not conforming with the worlds ways. The greatest magic is transmuting the passions. The greatest generosity is non-attachment. The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind. The greatest patience is humility. The greatest effort is not concerned with results. The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go. The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.

Want me to say it? Want me to confess what makes me an actual felon and reserves me a choice spot in hell?” “Please, Alexandria Patra,” Preton said, “tell me all your regrets.” Her eyes narrowed. “I taught children to surrender their developing minds to concepts like the greater good or the good of society which can’t exist in any form in this world without actual kids being trampled underneath their untouchable banners.” Pointing at her own chest, she added, “I taught children that in order to live up to those ‘higher’ ideals they must be obedient—to others, must sacrifice their dreams—to the needs of others. I taught them it was more important to be a part of a group than to stand on their own judgment. I told the non-conforming kids they should feel guilty for wanting to live on their own terms.” Alexa swept a hand forward, pointing it at Preton. “I then delivered every ego-stripped, dream-crushed child to the power mongers of the world like you, who will use this universally accepted mirage of morality to control them.

A school’s purpose wasn’t to enlighten anybody or to make them into a critical thinker. Schools existed only to train people for jobs, dulling their ability for critical thinking in the process, so that they could readily accept authority and mindless routine. In fact, when I read about the history of the school system that was commonly used in the world, I discovered that it came from the Middle Ages and was originally designed to teach people religion. And what did religious people do? They accepted absurd ideas without questioning. The same system that was designed to brainwash them—full of rote learning, non-questioning, conformity, and punishment—was the same one that was still being used today. Why? Because it worked. At least most of the time. For some reason, it hadn’t worked on me.

Nella nostra concezione moderna del mondo ―concezione scientifica non ancora definitivamente conclusa― la superstizione è un po' fuori luogo; mentre era ammessa nella concezione di epoche prescientifiche, poiché ne era un complemento logico. Aveva dunque relativamente ragione l'antico Romano, che rinunciava ad un progetto importante perché il volo degli uccelli era sfavorevole; agiva in modo conforme alle sue premesse. E se rinunciava al suo progetto perché aveva inciampato sulla soglia della sua porta, si rivelava superiore a noi increduli, si rivelava miglior psicologo di noi. Il fatto d'inciampare denotava l'esistenza di un dubbio, di un'opposizione interiore a questo progetto, la cui forza poteva annullare quella della sua intenzione al momento della realizzazione. In effetti si può essere sicuri del successo completo solo quando tutte le energie psichiche tendono al fine desiderato.

En cette perpétuelle bataille que l'on appelle vivre, on cherche à établir un code de comportement adapté à la société, communiste ou prétendument libre, dans laquelle on a été élevé. Nous obéissons à certaines règles de conduite, en tant qu'elles sont parties intégrantes de notre tradition, hindoue, islamique, chrétienne ou autre. Nous avons recours à autrui pour distinguer la bonne et la mauvaise façon d'agir, la bonne et la mauvaise façon de penser. En nous y conformant, notre action et notre pensée deviennent mécaniques, nos réactions deviennent automatiques. Nous pouvons facilement le constater en nous-mêmes. Depuis des siècles, nous nous faisons alimenter par nos maîtres, par nos autorités, par nos livres, par nos saints, leur demandant de nous révéler tout ce qui existe au-delà des collines, au-delà des montagnes, audelà de la Terre. Si leurs récits nous satisfont, c'est que nous vivons de mots et que notre vie est creuse et vide : une vie, pour ainsi dire de « seconde main ». Nous avons vécu de ce que l'on nous a dit, soit à cause de nos tendances, de nos inclinations, soit parce que les circonstances et le milieu nous y ont contraints. Ainsi, nous sommes la résultante de toutes sortes d'influences et il n'y a rien de neuf en nous, rien que nous ayons découvert par nous-mêmes, rien d'originel, de non corrompu, de clair.

Nihilismul pasiv, înțeles ca «declin și diminuare a spiritului» sau ca reacțiune și «împotrivire», este o înțelegere a faptului că valorile sunt total depășite dar și constatarea imposibilității acțiunii. Subiectul său realizează că orizontul său a fost deplasat dar este incapabil de a crea o valoare nouă. Blazarea și inconsecvența îl fac să pactizeze cu lipsa de sens și scop generalizată. El poate fi caracterizat printr-o valorizare excesivă a somnului: «În sinele cel mai lăuntric: a nu ști încotro? Vidul. Încercarea de a-l depăși prin narcoză...» Cuvântul-cheie al nihilismului pasiv este absoluta sa noncombativitate («nu mai atacă»). Senină�tatea sa nu este câștigată printr-un conflict deschis, nu este consecința unor lupte interioare în care subiectul își depășește natura și ajunge la o liniște interioară indestructibilă; resemnarea nihilistului pasiv este postulată încă din principii, subiectul reușind să nu se abată de la directiva unei non-rezistențe pasive. Cu toate că știe că valorile sunt aneantizate, că orizontul său este vid, el încearcă să se relaxeze în timpul unui naufragiu. Pentru asta are nevoie de erastzuri ale suprasensibilului, de ficțiuni generalizate (sau de narcotice), care îi adorm conștiința, simulând o meta-realitate, ce înlocuiește evidența aneantizării universale, conform principiului «din când în când o leacă de otravă: te-ajută să visezi frumos».

In each of the following chapters, dealing in turn with policing and repression, culture and propaganda, religion and education, the economy, society and everyday life, racial policy and antisemitism, and foreign policy, the overriding imperative of preparing Germany and its people for a major war emerges clearly as the common thread. But that imperative was neither rational in itself, nor followed in a coherent way. In one area after another, the contradictions and inner irrationalities of the regime emerge; the Nazi's headlong rush to war contained the seeds of the Third Reich's eventual destruction. How and why this should be so is one of the major questions that run through this book and binds its separate parts together. So do many further questions: about the extent to which the Third Reich won over the German people; the manner in which it worked; the degree to which Hitler, rather than broader systematic factors inherent in the structure of the Third Reich as a whole, drove policy onward; the possibilities of opposition, resistence, and dissent or even non-conformity to the dictates of National Socialism under a dictatorship that claimed the total allegiance of all its citizens; the nature of the Third Reich's relationship with modernity; the ways in which its policies in different areas resembled, or differed from, those pursued elsewhere in Europe and beyond during the 1930s; and much more besides.

1. Close Friend, someone who got yo back, yo "main nigga." 2. Rooted in blackness and the Black experience. From a middle-aged social worker: "That Brotha ain like dem ol e-lights, he real, he a shonuff nigga" 3. Generic, neutral refrence to African Americans. From a 30 something college educated Sista: "The party was live, it was wall to wall niggaz there" 4. A sista's man/lover/partner. from the beauty shop. "Guess we ain gon be seein too much of girlfriend no mo since she got herself a new nigga" From Hip Hop artist Foxy brown, "Ain no nigga like the on I got." 5. Rebellious, fearless unconventional, in-yo-face Black man. From former NBA superstar Charles Barkley, "Nineties niggas... The DailyNews, The Inquirer has been on my back... They want their Black Athletes to be Uncle Tom. I told you white boys you've never heard of a 90s nigga. We do what we want to do" quoted in The Source, December 1992). 6. Vulgar, disrespectful Black Person, antisocial, conforming to negative sterotype of African Americans. From former Hip Hop group Arrested Development, in their best-selling song, "People Everyday" 1992: A black man actin like a nigga... got stomped by an African" 7. A cool, down person, rooted in Hip Hop and black culture, regardless of race, used today by non-blacks to refer to other non-Blacks. 8. Anyone engaged in inappropriate, negative behavior; in this sense, Blacks may even apply the term to White folk. According to African American scholar Clarence Major's From Juba to Jive, Queen Latifah was quoted in Newsweek as criticizing the US government with these words. "Those niggers don't know what the fuck they doing

TOUZENBACH Si vous voulez. De quoi parlerons-nous ? VERCHININE De quoi ? Rêvons ensemble... par exemple de la vie telle qu’elle sera après nous, dans deux ou trois cents ans. TOUZENBACH Eh bien, après nous on s’envolera en ballon, on changera la coupe des vestons, on découvrira peut-être un sixième sens, qu’on développera, mais la vie restera la même, un vie difficile, pleine de mystère, et heureuse. Et dans mille ans, l’homme soupirera comme aujourd’hui : « Ah ! qu’il est difficile de vivre ! » Et il aura toujours peur de la mort et ne voudra pas mourir. VERCHININE, après avoir réfléchi. Comment vous expliquer ? Il me semble que tout va se transformer peu à peu, que le changement s’accomplit déjà, sous nos yeux. Dans deux ou trois cents ans, dans mille ans peut-être, peu importe le délai, s’établira une vie nouvelle, heureuse. Bien sûr, nous ne serons plus là, mais c’est pour cela que nous vivons, travaillons, souffrons enfin, c’est nous qui la créons, c’est même le seul but de notre existence, et si vous voulez, de notre bonheur. Macha rit doucement. TOUZENBACH Pourquoi riez-vous ? MACHA Je ne sais pas. Je ris depuis ce matin. VERCHININE J’ai fait les mêmes études que vous, je n’ai pas été à l’Académie militaire. Je lis beaucoup, mais je ne sais pas choisir mes lectures, peut-être devrais-je lire tout autre chose ; et cependant, plus je vis, plus j’ai envie de savoir. Mes cheveux blanchissent, bientôt je serai vieux, et je ne sais que peu, oh ! très peu de chose. Pourtant, il me semble que je sais l’essentiel, et que je le sais avec certitude. Comme je voudrais vous prouver qu’il n’y a pas, qu’il ne doit pas y avoir de bonheur pour nous, que nous ne le connaîtrons jamais... Pour nous, il n’y a que le travail, rien que le travail, le bonheur, il sera pour nos lointains descendants. (Un temps.) Le bonheur n’est pas pour moi, mais pour les enfants de mes enfants. TOUZENBACH Alors, d’après vous, il ne faut même pas rêver au bonheur ? Mais si je suis heureux ? VERCHININE Non. TOUZENBACH, joignant les mains et riant. Visiblement, nous ne nous comprenons pas. Comment vous convaincre ? (Macha rit doucement. Il lui montre son index.) Eh bien, riez ! (À Verchinine :) Non seulement dans deux ou trois cents ans, mais dans un million d’années, la vie sera encore la même ; elle ne change pas, elle est immuable, conforme à ses propres lois, qui ne nous concernent pas, ou dont nous ne saurons jamais rien. Les oiseaux migrateurs, les cigognes, par exemple, doivent voler, et quelles que soient les pensées, sublimes ou insignifiantes, qui leur passent par la tête, elles volent sans relâche, sans savoir pourquoi, ni où elles vont. Elles volent et voleront, quels que soient les philosophes qu’il pourrait y avoir parmi elles ; elles peuvent toujours philosopher, si ça les amuse, pourvu qu’elles volent... MACHA Tout de même, quel est le sens de tout cela ? TOUZENBACH Le sens... Voilà, il neige. Où est le sens ? MACHA Il me semble que l’homme doit avoir une foi, du moins en chercher une, sinon sa vie est complètement vide... Vivre et ignorer pourquoi les cigognes volent, pourquoi les enfants naissent, pourquoi il y a des étoiles au ciel... Il faut savoir pourquoi l’on vit, ou alors tout n’est que balivernes et foutaises. Comme dit Gogol : « Il est ennuyeux de vivre en ce monde, messieurs. »