quotes about Originality
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Men often applaud an imitation and hiss the real thing.
-- Aesop -
I, myself, was always recognized . . . as the “slow one†in the family. It was quite true, and I knew it and accepted it. Writing and spelling were always terribly difficult for me. My letters were without originality. I was . . . an extraordinarily bad speller and have remained so until this day.
-- Agatha Christie -
Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe - you can't take a taxi.
-- Alan Alda -
Anyone who attempts anything original in the world must expect a bit of ridicule.
-- Alberto Juantorena -
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The proponents of Steinitz' theory - Tarrasch and his supporters - tried to express Steinitz' teaching in the form of laconic rules, and as often happens in such cases, they went too far. The laconic tended to become dogmatic, and chess began to lose its freshness, originality and charm.
-- Alexander Kotov -
The glass I drink from is not large, but at least it is my own.
-- Alfred de MussetSource : 'La Coupe et les lévres'
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You come to Paris, you get true originality, and it's wonderful.
-- Andre Leon Talley -
No one can be profoundly original who does not avoid eccentricity.
-- Andre Maurois -
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Creativity is the defeat of habit by imposing originality and change.
-- Andy LawSource : Arthur Koestler, Harold Harris (1975). “Astride the two cultures: Arthur Koestler at 70”, Not Avail
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Originality implies being bold enough to go beyond accepted norms.
-- Anthony StorrSource : Anthony Storr (2015). “Solitude a Return to the Self”, p.81, Simon and Schuster
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Because of this, originality consists in returning to the origin.
-- Antonio Gaudi -
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Originality consists of returning to the origin. Thus, originality means returning, through one's resources, to the simplicity of the early solutions.
-- Antonio Gaudi -
The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.
-- Arthur Koestler -
Creativity is the defeat of habit by originality.
-- Arthur Koestler -
Anything really new is repulsive, because it is abnormal and unreasonable.
-- Asger Jorn -
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Begin with another's to end with your own.
-- Baltasar Gracian -
Originality is the art of concealing your sources.
-- Benjamin Franklin -
The more intelligent a man is, the more originality he discovers in others.
-- Blaise Pascal -
U2 is an original species... there are colours and feelings and emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone.
-- Bono -
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When I was coming up, we weren't trying to get a hit or get paid, we were just trying to do our thing. The only thing we were really trying to do was to be recognized for our originality.
-- Bootsy Collins -
Credentials have been a problem for a long time in my work. Originality has been my strength, and credentials and academia have not been.
-- Budd HopkinsSource : "Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference". Book by Andrea Pritchard, p. 134, 1994.
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Some people say I was very brave, but I really just didn't know any better. All I had was my originality.
-- Buffy Sainte-MarieSource : Source: www.motherjones.com
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I always try to improve, to find new ways of expressing myself, to keep looking for truth and originality.
-- Burt Lancaster -
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He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.
-- Charles Lamb -
All originality and no plagiarism makes for dull preaching.
-- Charles Spurgeon -
There is no such thing as originality. It has all been said before, suffered before. If a person knows that, is it any wonder love becomes mechanical and death just a scene to be shunned? There is no absolute knowledge to be gained from either. Just another ride on the merry-go-round, another blurred scene of faces smiling and faces grieved.
-- Clive BarkerSource : Jacob Bronowski (1976). “The ascent of man”
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Only those with no memory insist on their originality.
-- Coco Chanel -
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It takes a courageous fool to say things that have not been said and to do things that have not been done.
-- Criss Jami -
The only thing worth doing is what's never been done before.
-- David Salle -
Originality is when you mix two things that haven't been mixed.
-- DJ Marlboro -
It's certainly going to be different from what people have seen before.
-- Donald Lambert -
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There is no such thing as a completely original technique or subject.
-- Donald Lambert -
A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.
-- Dorothy L. Sayers -
True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.
-- Edith Wharton -
Great success in examinations does naturally not as a rule go with originality of thought.
-- Edward CarpenterSource : Edward Carpenter (1916). “My days and dreams: being autobiographical notes”
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Profundity and originality are attributes of single, if not singular, minds.
-- Edwin Land -
Originality in art puts charm where it wasn't.
-- Eli Siegel -
A poor original is better than a good imitation.
-- Ella Wheeler WilcoxSource : Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2012). “An Ambitious Man (Annotated Edition)”, p.6, Jazzybee Verlag
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it is wiser to be conventionally immoral than unconventionally moral. It isn't the immorality they object to, but the originality.
-- Ellen Glasgow -
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To overestimate the originality of one's thoughts is perhaps a less serious defect than being unaware of their newness. There is a more pronounced lack of sensitivity in underestimating (ourselves and others) than in overestimating.
-- Eric Hoffer -
Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.
-- Eric Hoffer -
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest. A society which gives unlimited freedom to the individual, more often than not attains a disconcerting sameness.
-- Eric Hoffer -
An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.
-- François-René de Chateaubriand -
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Young men and young women, full of courage, originality, and genius, are everywhere to be met with.
-- Frank Crowninshield -
One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves.
-- George Eliot -
Originality is the only thing that counts. But the originator uses material and ideas that occur round him and pass through him. And out of his experience comes the original creation.
-- George Gershwin -
Originality is independence, not rebellion; it is sincerity, not antagonism.
-- George Henry LewesSource : George Henry Lewes (1891). “The Principles of Success in Literature”
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Every true poet, I thought, must be original and originality a condition of poetic genius; so that each poet is like a species in nature (not an individuum genericum or specificum ) and can never recur. That nothing shd. be old or borrowed however cannot be.
-- Gerard Manley Hopkins -
Originality is for people with short memories
-- Grayson Perry -
Photography is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one's own originality. It's a way of life.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson -
After some time passed in studying - and even imitating - the works of others, I would recommend the student to endeavour to be original, and to remember that originality should not be undiscovered plagiarism.
-- Henry Peach Robinson -
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Enemies are often former or potential friends who have been denied - or think that they have been denied - something.
-- Idries Shah -
Human nature has a much greater genius for sameness than for originality.
-- James Russell Lowell -
All thoughtful men are solitary and original in themselves.
-- James Russell Lowell -
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An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
-- Jean Cocteau -
Originality exists in every individual because each of us differs from the others. We are all primary numbers divisible only by ourselves.
-- Jean Guitton -
That one tickled. If electrocution is your way of flirting, I commend you on your originality.
-- Jeaniene Frost -
Select only things to steal that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent
-- Jim Jarmusch -
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Imposing an alleged uniform general method upon everybody breeds mediocrity in all but the very exceptional. And measuring originality by deviation from the mass breeds eccentricity in them.
-- John Dewey -
Assimilate all you can from tradition and then say things in your own way.
-- John French Sloan -
While an original is always hard to find, he is easy to recognize.
-- John Landis Mason -
Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.
-- John Stuart Mill -
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All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.
-- John Stuart Mill -
There is a case for saying that the creation of new aesthetic forms has been the most fundamentally productive of all forms of human activity. Whoever creates new artistic conventions has found methods of interchange between people about matters which were incommunicable before. The capacity to do this has been the basis of the whole of human history.
-- John Zachary Young -
The original is unfaithful to the translation.
-- Jorge Luis Borges -
Geniuses and prophets do not usually excel in professional learning, and their originality, if any, is often due precisely to the fact that they do not.
-- Joseph A. Schumpeter -
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About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.
-- Josh Billings -
A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.
-- Joshua ReynoldsSource : 'Discourses on Art' (ed. R. Wark, 1975) no. 3 (14 December 1770)
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There is nothing new under the sun, not even Manet.
-- Jules Breton -
Originality usually amounts only to plagiarizing something unfamiliar.
-- Katharine Fullerton GerouldSource : Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1920). “Modes and Morals”
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Should we all confess our sins to one another we would all laugh at one another for our lack of originality
-- Khalil Gibran -
To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren't any.
-- Les PaulSource : FaceBook post by Les Paul from Nov 30, 2015
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Originality is... a by-product of sincerity.
-- Marianne Moore -
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I believe the structure of 'House of Leaves' is far more difficult to explain than it is to read. And while I'd like to lay claim to some extraordinary act of originality, truth is I'm only taking advantage of capabilities inherent in everyone.
-- Mark Z. Danielewski -
Cerebration is the enemy of originality in art.
-- Martin RittSource : Martin Ritt, Gabriel Miller (2003). “Martin Ritt: Interviews”, p.205, Univ. Press of Mississippi
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Mistakes are the only universal form of originality.
-- Mason Cooley -
Let me not follow in the clamor of the world, but walk calmly in my path...
-- Max EhrmannSource : Max Ehrmann, “'A Prayer'”
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Sometimes you have to be worn out and burnt out to become authentic and original.
-- Michael Eisner -
Find yourself and express yourself in your own particular way. Express your love openly.
-- Miguel Angel Ruiz -
Every film has to be the next something else; originality isn't celebrated because you can't market it.
-- Nick MoranSource : "Home entertainment" by Nick Moran, www.theguardian.com. June 14, 2001.
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In this world, one thing you should definitely strive for is originality. Just be who you are, and be your own person. That's what will make you stand out.
-- Nolan Gould -
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My originality consists in putting the logic of the visible to the service of the invisible.
-- Odilon RedonSource : Odilon Redon, Pablo Picasso, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1952). “Redon, drawings and lithographs: Museum of Modern Art, N.Y., [Feb. 14-April 20, 1952]”
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Let us not forget that the greatest composers were also the greatest thieves. They stole from everyone and everywhere.
-- Pablo Casals -
A man is original when he speaks the truth that has always been known to all good men.
-- Patrick KavanaghSource : Patrick Kavanagh (1973). “Collected Pruse”
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Happiness is a sunbeam, which may pass though a thousand bosoms without losing a particle of its original ray.
-- Philip Sidney -
Frederick Turner comes across in his poems as a man of impressively broad experience, intellectual brilliance, and originality. … He’s at his best when he unleashes his extraordinary powers of observation.
-- Richard Tillinghast -
The true is inimitable, the false untransformable.
-- Robert Bresson -
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Do not worry about your originality. You could not get rid of it even if you wanted to.
-- Robert Henri -
Don't worry about your originality. You couldn't get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do.
-- Robert Henri -
Of course quality is important but is it not the quality of an individual's originality that is most important?
-- Robert Owen -
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Having to be different is the same trap as having to be the same.
-- Robert Rauschenberg -
The principal mark of genius is not perfection, but originality.
-- Robert Schumann -
He travels the fastest who travels alone.
-- Rudyard Kipling -
Originality is dangerous. It challenges, questions, overturns assumptions, unsettles moral codes.
-- Salman Rushdie -