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Deviance Quotes

Browse 39 quotes about Deviance.

Deviance Quotes

“If little else, the brain is an educational toy. The problem with possessing such an engaging toy is that other people want to play with it, too. Sometime they'd rather play with yours than theirs. Or they object if you play with yours in a different manner from the way they play with theirs. The result is, a few games out of a toy department of possibilities are universally and endlessly repeated. If you don't play some people's game, they say that you have "lost your marbles," not recognizing that, while Chinese checkers is indeed a fine pastime, a person may also play dominoes, chess, strip poker, tiddlywinks, drop-the-soap or Russian roulette with his brain.”

GamesBrainCreativitySocietyIndividualityToysDevianceNormalizing
Book:Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
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“Modern culture rewards surface-level uniqueness, such as appearance, career path, or social media presence, but punishes true divergence in worldview, thought, or behavior. What people often refer to as "being different" is usually just someone walking down the exact same path as everyone else, but with their steps slightly bent and curved rather than being direct and usual like others. So, although they appear as "individuals" from the outside, inside, they are actually a herd of the same kind of sheep blindly following each other. This is conformity within “individuality.” And this disguise is the thing that gives the tool for the Westerners to call themselves "freedom fighters.”

FreedomSlaveryIndividualityConformityIndividualismModernityDifferenceHerd MentalityArtificialityDeviance
Author:Sov8840
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“A more fundamental problem with labelling human distress and deviance as mental disorder is that it reduces a complex, important, and distinct part of human life to nothing more than a biological illness or defect, not to be processed or understood, or in some cases even embraced, but to be ‘treated’ and ‘cured’ by any means possible—often with drugs that may be doing much more harm than good. This biological reductiveness, along with the stigma that it attracts, shapes the person’s interpretation and experience of his distress or deviance, and, ultimately, his relation to himself, to others, and to the world. Moreover, to call out every difference and deviance as mental disorder is also to circumscribe normality and define sanity, not as tranquillity or possibility, which are the products of the wisdom that is being denied, but as conformity, placidity, and a kind of mediocrity.”

WisdomMadnessMental HealthMental IllnessMeaningConformitySanityPsychiatryStigmaMental DisorderDevianceBiological Reductiveness
Book:The Meaning of Madness
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“People are led to believe they possess freedom of expression simply because they are allowed to say whatever they please. At first glance, this indeed seems true: one may share offensive jokes, hurl profanities, circulate crude memes, ridicule religion, express rage outbursts, swear at others, or indulge in bizarre fantasies. Yet all of this unfolds within an invisible cage—a system of rules dressed as liberty. The moment someone speaks of suicide, rape, or other "sensitive" subjects—not to promote them, but simply to confront them—their words are flagged, erased, and their presence diminished. Even the very words “suicide” or “rape” are censored with asterisks. The crime lies not in intent but in utterance. Likewise, should someone express a worldview too deviant from that of mass society, their account may be silenced under vague accusations: “spam,” “harm,” “hate speech,” or “misinformation.”

FreedomExpressionInternetCensorshipFree SpeechModernityNormalityCensoringDevianceCensor
Author:Sov8840
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“It always astonishes me to discover people who think that religion and sex have nothing to do with one another, and that you can act as you like in the one sphere while thinking what you should in the other. In fact, of all the rites of passage that religions have taken under their wing, that of sexual initiation has been by the most tenaciously adhered to. English people today look with incredulity on the habit in some Muslim communities of veiling and hiding women, of forcing them to marry the man chosen for them, and of occasionally killing them for 'honour's' sake. What can this possibly have to do with obedience to Allah, the compassionate, the merciful, they ask themselves? In fact, it has everything to do with it. Sex is not only the gateway through which the next generation enters the community; it is the place in which our actions are most unavoidably subject to the ethic of 'pollution and taboo'.”

ReligionSexDeviance
Book:Our Church: A Personal History of the Church of England
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“You have doubtless read Trotter’s Instincts of the Herd in War and Peace, Mister Bond. Well, I am by nature and predilection a wolf and I live by a wolf’s laws. Naturally the sheep describe such a person as a “criminal”. ‘The fact, Mister Bond,’ The Big Man continued after a pause, ‘that I survive and indeed enjoy limitless success, although I am alone against countless millions of sheep, is attributable to the modern techniques I described to you on the occasion of our last talk, and to an infinite capacity for taking pains. Not dull, plodding pains, but artistic, subtle pains. And I find, Mister Bond, that it is not difficult to outwit sheep, however many of them there may be, if one is dedicated to the task and if one is by nature an extremely well-equipped wolf.”

CrowdHerd MentalityDevianceSheepleJames BondNoncomformity
Book:LIVE AND LET DIE
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“Tolerance does explain an escalating pattern of sexual addiction. Tolerance occurs in either fantasy or behavior. For example, an addict using benign fantasies to become sexually aroused may progress to needing sadomasochistic fantasies. Or the addict may switch from fantasies to behavior when the addict reaches a level of tolerance to fantasies alone.”

PornographyImmoralityPerversionJewsFantasiesDevianceSadomasochismSexual AddictionDegeneracy
Book:Silently Seduced: When Parents Make Their Children Partners : Understanding Covert Incest
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“There is no such thing as a value-free concept of deviance; to say homosexuals are deviant because they are a statistical minority is, in practice, to stigmatize them. Nuns are rarely classed as deviants for the same reason, although if they obey their vows they clearly differ very significantly from the great majority of people.”

PeopleIfsReasonValuesPracticeConceptsMajorityMinoritiesHomosexualVowNunDeviantsDeviance
Book:The Homosexualization of America
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“One thing is to have the protection of human rights for homosexuals and quite something else is this promotion of indecency. It would be immoral and unethical to deny the homosexuals their human rights. But it is also immoral to consider disorders as normal. None of these deviances are biological. They are acquired by fantasizing about them.”

HumansWould BeRightsOne ThingNormalHuman RightsDenyProtectionDisorderHomosexualImmoralPromotionUnethicalDeviance
Author:Ali Sina
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“Talking about morality can be offensive. Morality is a politically incorrect subject. Many people are genuinely offended if someone speaks of morality and family values. It is okay if you talk about your sexual fantasies and deviances. This is called "liberation". But you would be frowned at if you talk about morality in public. Then you'd be accused of trying to impose your values on others.”

PeopleIfsTryingWould BeValuesSpeakTalkingFantasySubjectsMoralityOkayLiberationOffensiveOffendedAccusedFamily ValuesDeviance
Author:Ali Sina
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“My character [in Ted Bundy] was unaware of all the murders that were being committed by him, so I kind of tried to keep myself out of it and kind of keep an innocent point of view from it. The hard scenes for me were the sex scenes just because there's like sexual deviance going on and there was stuff that he want her to do and that was really disturbing.”

WantKindHardCharacterSexStuffViewsSceneMurderCommittedPoint Of ViewInnocentDisturbingTed BundyDeviance
Author:Boti Bliss
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“Since the most important element of any concept is that its originating question be appropriately framed, any theory demanding an explanation for homosexuality is a problematic one because it maintains our existence as a category of deviance. I mean, no one is running around trying to figure out why some people like sports, for example.”

PeopleTryingMeanImportantRunningSportsJusticeExistenceFiguresExampleTheoryPersonalityElementsDiversityConceptsSocial JusticeExplanationCategoriesHomosexualityFramedDeviance
Author:Sarah Schulman
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“Positive deviance means doing the right thing for sustainability, despite being surrounded by the wrong institutional structures, the wrong processes and stubbornly uncooperative people. That is what sustainability-literate leadership means today. Surrounded by evidence of rampant unsustainability it is not possible to say 'I did not know'”

PeopleKnowsMeanTodayProcessVisionFutureEvidenceStructureDespiteRight ThingSustainabilityDoing The Right ThingSustainable DevelopmentDevianceUncooperative
Author:Sara Parkin
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“Ever since the Evil Empire turned out to be a collection of third-world countries, Americans aligned on the far right have tried to cast gay men and lesbians as the new enemy, calculating deviants seducing the nation's young, anti-Avon ladies selling sodomy door-to-door. This simply won't wash. Just as seeing the Russians up close and personal on television humanized them, so seeing the lesbian grandmother of two little girls wearing her gold medal with pride makes the notion of otherness, much less deviance, silly and ignorant.”

MenWorldLittlesTwoCountryYoungGirlEvilNationsJusticeEnemySeeingDoorsTelevisionPrideGayGoldThirdsSocial JusticeNotionCastsSillyIgnorantSellingCollectionsEmpiresGrandmotherMedalThird WorldSeducingGay MenGold MedalsCalculatingOthernessThird World CountriesDeviantsDevianceAvon
Author:Anna Quindlen
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“The combination to be on guard for is young and bored, or young and resentful. You can spot them at social gatherings, the grad students or interns who tell you about syndromes, conditions, deviances, and disorders, and they love, love, love to talk. They speak in half-sentences with a knowing smile-squint, watch you falter at the pause, and then keep talking.”

YoungSpeakSocialHalfTalkingWatchesKnowingConditionsStudentsSentencesSpotsCombinationBoredDisorderPausesGatheringSyndromesResentfulGradKeep TalkingDeviance
Author:Craig Clevenger
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“Madonna Kolbenschlag suggest that if an awakened woman forgoes innocence and denial, if she refuses to make compromises with herself and defect to patriarchy, then her only option becomes deviance. I chose deviance. I chose to be a loving dissident. To dance the dance of dissidence. This stance can be assumed from the inside or the outside. Whichever place we choose, the important thing is having the sustained will to be, act, and speak from the ground of our feminine souls.”

IfsImportantSoulSpeakImportant ThingsRefuseCompromiseInnocenceDenialFemininePatriarchyDefectsAwakenedStanceDissidentsDeviance
Author:Sue Monk Kidd
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