Anna Quindlen:

The voices of conformity speak so loudly.  Don't listen to them.  People are going to tell you what you ought to think and how you ought to feel.  They will tell you what to read and how to live.  They will urge you to take jobs they loathe themselves and to follow safe paths that they themselves find tedious.  Don't do it.  Only a principled refusal to be terrorized by these stingy standards will save you from a Frankenstein life made up of others' expectations grafted together into a poor semblance of existence.  You can't afford to do that.  It's what has poisoned our culture, our community and our nation character.  No one ever does the right thing from fear and so many of the wrong things are done in its shadow.

Grinnell College Commencement Address