Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
This rhetorical question highlights the irony of everyone trying to be unique in the same way.
In plain terms
Why act different just to fit in with others who act different?
What can you take from it?
Conformity hides even in rebellion.

Where it applies

  • discussing trends
  • social critique
  • writing satire

Putting it to work

  • critique social norms
  • write commentary

Questions to consider

  • Is true nonconformity possible?
  • Why do rebels often copy each other?

Another view

It oversimplifies the motivation behind nonconformity.

More from James Thurber

  1. We all have faults, and mine is being wicked.

    Permalink to quote #92
  2. Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.

    Permalink to quote #94
  3. Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.

    Permalink to quote #91

Related quotes

  1. Everyone is the other, and no one is himself. The they, which supplies the answer to the who of everyday Da-sein, is the nobody to whom every Da-sein has alway…

    Martin HeideggerMartin Heidegger quote #1
  2. 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 co…

    J.K. RowlingJ.K. Rowling quote #1
  3. Mass democracy, mass morality and the mass media thrive independently of the individual, who joins them only at the cost of at least a partial perversion of hi…

    Al AlvarezAl Alvarez quote #4