what is the good of helping misfits to conform to society?

‘It Is No Measure of Health To Be Well-Adjusted to a Profoundly Sick Society’ is perhaps Krishnamurti’s best-known quote, shared widely across the internet and even in films. Although we cannot attribute these exact words to Krishnamurti, he made similar statements over the decades, and it is a theme he returned to repeatedly.

The nearest direct quote from Krishnamurti we have found, from Commentaries on Living Series 3 (1960), written in the early 1950s, is:

Is society healthy, that an individual should return to it? Has not society itself helped to make the individual unhealthy? Of course, the unhealthy must be made healthy, that goes without saying; but why should the individual adjust himself to an unhealthy society? If he is healthy, he will not be a part of it. Without first questioning the health of society, what is the good of helping misfits to conform to society?

Additionally:

To help the individual to fit into a society which is ever at war with itself – is this what psychologists and analysts are supposed to do? Is the individual to be healed only in order to kill or be killed? If one is not killed, or driven insane, then must one only fit into the structure of hate, envy, ambition and superstition which can be very scientific?

The origin of this quote being assigned to Krishnamurti is probably a book written by Mark Vonnegut (Kurt Vonnegut’s son) about his mental illness (The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity). The book was published in 1975 and attributes this phrase to Krishnamurti, without giving any source. Vonnegut might have paraphrased or misquoted it, and it must have spread from there.