The people in Fahrenheit 451 are easy to control because they’re alike.
In school, they are taught to be the same. They don’t learn unchanging facts instead of ideas or how to think for themselves.
Books are banned, and people are addicted to mindless entertainment.
Citizens turn in their friends and neighbors if they go against the norm.
Because no one questions anything, they’re led to their destruction.
Fahrenheit 451 Quotes With Page Numbers
Fahrenheit 451 Conformity Quotes
“Do you ever read any of the books you burn?”
He laughed. “That’s against the law!”
“Oh. Of course.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Clarisse McClellan and Guy Montag, Pages 5, 6
“He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag as the narrator, Page 9
“It’s only two thousand dollars,” she replied. “And I should think you’d consider me sometimes. If we had a fourth wall, why it’d be just like this room wasn’t ours at all, but all kinds of exotic people’s rooms. We could do without a few things.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Mildred Montag, Page 18
“He said hello and then said, “What are you up to now?”
“I’m still crazy. The rain feels good. I love to walk in it.
“I don’t think I’d like that,” he said.
“You might if you tried.”
“I never have.”
She licked her lips. “Rain even tastes good.”
“What do you do, go around trying everything once?” he asked.
“Sometimes twice.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Clarisse McClellan and Guy Montag about conformity, Page 19
“You’re not like the others. I’ve seen a few; I know. When I talk, you look at me. When I said something about the moon, you looked at the moon, last night. The others would never do that. The others would walk off and leave me talking. Or threaten me. No one has time any more for anyone else. You’re one of the few who put up with me. That’s why I think it’s so strange you’re a fireman, it just doesn’t seem right for you, somehow.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Clarisse McClellan to Guy Montag about conformity, Page 21
“what does the Hound think about down there nights? Is it coming alive on us, really? It makes me cold.”
“It doesn’t think anything we don’t want it to think.”
“That’s sad,” said Montag, quietly, “because all we put into it is hunting and finding and killing. What a shame if that’s all it can ever know.”‘
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Captain Beatty and Guy Montag, Page 25
“I’m antisocial, they say. I don’t mix. It’s so strange. I’m very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn’t it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Clarisse McClellan about conformity, Page 26-27
“Why aren’t you in school? I see you every day wandering around.”
“Oh, they don’t miss me,” she said. “I’m antisocial, they say. I don’t mix. It’s so strange. I’m very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn’t it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this.” She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. “Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don’t think it’s social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don’t; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That’s not social to me at all. It’s a lot of funnels and lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it’s wine when it’s not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can’t do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing ‘chicken’ and ‘knock hubcaps.’ I guess I’m everything they say I am, all right. I haven’t any friends. That’s supposed to prove I’m abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag and Clarisse McClellan about conformity, Page 27
“Montag started up, his mouth opened. Had he ever seen a fireman that didn’t have black hair, black brows, a fiery face, and a blue-steel shaved but unshaved look? These men were all mirrorimages of himself! Were all firemen picked then for their looks as well as their proclivities?”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag as the narrator, Page 30
“Where’s your common sense? None of those books agree with each other. You’ve been locked up here for years with a regular damned Tower of Babel. Snap out of it! The people in those books never lived. Come on now!”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Captain Beatty, Page 35
“The woman on the porch reached out with contempt to them all and struck the kitchen match against the railing.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag as the Narrator,, Page 37
“Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple the population. Films and radios, magazines, books levelled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you follow me?”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Captain Beatty, Page 51
“Speed up the film, Montag, quick… Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline!… Whirl man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Captain Beatty to Montag about conformity, Page 52
“More sports for everyone, group spirit, fun and you don’t have to think, eh? Organize and organize and superorganize super-super sports. More cartoons in books. More pictures. The mind drinks less and less.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Captain Beatty, Page 54
“Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that!… Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Captain Beatty about conformity, Page 55
“We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Captain Beatty about conformity, Page 55
“The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school. That’s why we’ve lowered the kindergarten age year after year until now we’re almost snatching them from the cradle.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag and Captain Beatty about conformity, Pages 57-58
“She didn’t want to know how a thing was done, but why…. Luckily, queer ones like her don’t happen often.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Captain Beatty about Clarisse McClellan, Pages 57, 58
“Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Captain Beatty to Montag, Page 58
“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Captain Beatty to Montag, Page 58
“At least once in his career, every fireman gets an itch. What do the books say, he wonders. Oh, to scratch that itch, eh?”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Captain Beatty to Montag, Page 59
“The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we’re the happiness boys. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Captain Beatty to Montag, Page 59
“Mr. Montag, you are looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going a long time back. I said nothing. I am one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the ‘guilty,’ but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Professor Faber, Page 78
“It’s not books you need, it’s some of the things that once were it books….The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through radios and televisors, but are not.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Professor Faber about conformity, Pages 78, 79
“So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Professor Faber about conformity, Page 79
“Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Professor Faber, Page 83
“Those who don’t build must burn. It’s as old as history and juvenile delinquents.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Professor Faber about conformity, Page 85
“I don’t want to change sides and just be told what to do. There’s no reason to change if I do that.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag, Page 88
“Come on, let’s be cheery, you turn the `family’ on, now. Go ahead. Let’s laugh and be happy, now, stop crying, we’ll have a party!”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Mildred Montag, Page 97
“He would be Montag-plus-Faber, fire plus water, and then, one day, after everything had mixed and simmered and worked away in silence, there would be neither fire nor water, but wine.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, The Narrator about Montag and Professor Faber, Page 99
“Don’t haggle and nag them; you were so recently of them yourself. They are so confident that they will run on forever. But they won’t run on. They don’t know that this is all one hug big blazing meteor that makes a pretty fire in space, but that some day it’ll have to hit. They see only the blaze, the pretty fire, as you saw it.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Professor Faber, Pages 99, 100
“If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Professor Faber, Page 100
“What is it about fire that’s so lovely? No matter what age we are, what draws us to it?… It’s perpetual motion; the thing man wanted to invent but never did. Or almost perpetual motion. If you let it go on, it’d burn our lifetimes out.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Captain Beatty about conformity, Page 109
“Now, Montag, you’re a burden. And fire will lift you off my shoulders, clean, quick, sure; nothing to rot later. Antibiotic, aesthetic, practical.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Captain Beatty about conformity, Page 109
“Was it my wife turned in the alarm?”
Beatty nodded. “But her friends turned in an alarm earlier, that I let ride. One way or the other, you’d have got it. It was pretty silly, quoting poetry around free and easy like that. It was the act of a silly damn snob. Give a man a few lines of verse and he thinks he’s the Lord of all Creation. You think you can walk on water with your books. Well, the world can get by just fine without them. Look where they got you, in slime up to your lip. If I stir the slime with my little finger, you’ll drown ! ”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Captain Beatty and Guy Montag about conformity, Pages 111-12
“We’re nothing more than dust jackets for books, of no significance otherwise.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Granger about conformity, Page 146
“But you can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can’t last.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Granger, Page 146
“…We’re going to build a mirror-factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them.”
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Granger, Page 157
Fahrenheit 451 Conformity Theme Analysis
The theme of conformity is pervasive throughout Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Individual thought is discouraged in this society, and hedonism is celebrated instead of intellectual pursuits.
Bradbury illustrates the enforcement of conformity from the outset, with the firemen’s role being to destroy books, emblematic of free thought.
Guy Montag, a fireman, himself shares a wry laugh with Clarisse McClellan at the impossibility of him reading the books he is burning (Pages 5 and 6), underscoring how deeply ingrained this norm is.
Montag’s wife, Mildred, craves a fourth wall in their home, symbolizing her desire for more escapism from reality and her disregard for materialistic comforts over intellectual fulfillment (Page 18). Having television screens on every wall makes it almost impossible to have independent thoughts.
Clarisse McClellan, a symbol of individuality and rebellion, starkly contrasts Montag and Mildred. She encourages Montag to test societal norms and experience life’s simple pleasures. This interaction emphasizes the rarity and ostracization of non-conformity (Page 19).
Montag’s inconsistent position as a follower of the firemen and one who listens to the rebellious Clarisse reflects the inner turmoil he faces in grappling with the concept of conformity (Page 21).
The Mechanical Hound, an agent of the state, is another expression of imposed conformity, only following orders related to hunting, finding, and killing (Page 25).
Clarisse verbally challenges the societal definition of being “social” and suggests the current practices are isolating and repressive. This incisive critique underpins the dystopia’s warped understanding of sociality, hinting at an egregious level of societal control (Pages 26-27).
The education system in Bradbury’s dystopia reinforces conformity. It discourages interaction and individual thinking, focusing solely on incessant, unilateral information delivery, preventing students from asking questions.
This presents education as another means of controlling and homogenizing thought, further illustrating the widespread influence of obedience in society.