Or about how when you're a child, to stop you from following the crowd you're assaulted with the line "If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?" but when you're an adult and to be different is suddenly a crime, people seem to be saying, "Hey. Everyone else is jumping off a bridge. Why aren't you?
Interpretation
The quote critiques the contradictory societal pressures regarding conformity and individuality across different life stages.
In this thought-provoking quote, Steve Toltz highlights the irony of how societal expectations shift from discouraging conformity in childhood to promoting it in adulthood. The metaphor of jumping off a bridge serves to illustrate the inherent tension between the desire to fit in and the value of standing out, ultimately questioning the standards by which we navigate social behavior.
In practice
During a speech about innovation in the workplace, one could say this quote to inspire employees to think outside the box.
I was told by my grandfather who was a minister that we all were put here on earth to be of service to one another, and it is quite gratifying to know that if I am able to be of help to one that is not able to help themselves then I am fulfilling my obligation as a human being.
What have I done? I've blundered my way through life. So I have my picture on the wall. The minute I die, that picture will start to yellow and fade and eventually be gone. Blown in the wind and become part of the molecular structure of something else. These things we see as "success," they're non-accomplishments.
If I had a choice, if I had understood earlier that the reason my days were all the same was because I wanted them like that, perhaps.
Standing alone among great democratic nations in imposing the death penalty is another moral decision that Americansare being forced to confront.
Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Its big men are mostly little men with fancy offices and a lot of money. A great many of them are stupid little men, with reach-me-down brains, small-town arrogance and a sort of animal knack of smelling out the taste of the stupidest part of the public. They have played in luck so long that they have come to mistake luck for enlightenment." - on Hollywood
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