conforming nonconformists

If we were all what is generally thought of as mentally healthy, I have a terrible fear that we’d all be alike. Even as we’re rushing towards the end of another thousand years, we are still terrified by nonconformity; our nonconforming hippies are at least as conformist as the conformists against whom they are rebelling. I can’t think of one great human being in the arts, or in history generally, who conformed, who succeeded, as educational experts tell us children must succeed, with his peer group.

Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet, page. 54.