We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with
the drove.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform
(or pause and reflect).
- Notebook, 1904
Conformity-the natural instinct to passively yield to that vague something recognized
as authority.
- "Corn Pone Opinions"
It is our nature to conform; it is a force which not many can successfully resist.
What is its seat? The inborn requirement of self-approval.
- "Corn Pone Opinions"
In morals, conduct, and beliefs we take the color of our environment and associations,
and it is a color that can be safely warranted to wash.
- "Is Shakespeare Dead?"
Broadly speaking corn-pone stands for self-approval. Self-approval is acquired
mainly from the approval of others. Conformity is the result. Corn-pone is confor{mity}.
Sometimes it has a sordid business interest back of it and is calculated: but
mainly is it unconscious and not calculated.
- note on newspaper clipping of 2/18/1901; quoted in Mark Twain: God's Fool,
Hamlin Hill
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