Quotes about originality

Men often applaud an imitation and hiss the real thing.

— Aesop

ORIGINALITY is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe -- you can't take a taxi.

— Alan Alda

Nearly all our originality comes from the stamp that time impresses upon our sensibility.

— Charles Baudelaire

I think one of the reasons I'm popular again is because I'm wearing a tie. You have to be different.

— Tony Bennett

The original is unfaithful to the translation.

— Jorge Luis Borges

The true is inimitable, the false untransformable.

— Robert Bresson

Everything has been said, and we have come too late, now that men have been living and thinking for seven thousand years and more.

— Jean De La Bruyere

Set me a task in which I can put something of my very self, and it is a task no longer. It is joy and art.

— Bliss Carman

Let us not forget that the greatest composers were also the greatest thieves. They stole from everyone and everywhere.

— Pablo Casals

It's been very important throughout my career that I've met all the guys I've copied, because at each stage they've said, Don't play like me, play like you.

— Eric Clapton

When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.

— Jean Cocteau

The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.

— Salvador Dali

An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.

— De Chateaubriand

All cases are unique and very similar to others.

— T. S. Eliot

The most original of authors are not so because they advance what is new, but more because they know how to say something, as if it had never been said before.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Begin with another's to end with your own.

— Baltasar Gracian

All profoundly original art looks ugly at first.

— Clement Greenberg

It is a matter of perfect indifference where a thing originated; the only question is: Is it true in and for itself?

— Georg Hegel

Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with that which we did not originate. To discover something wholly new can be a matter of chance, of idle tinkering, or even of the chronic dissatisfaction of the untalented.

— Eric Hoffer

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

People would rather be wrong than be different.

— Henry Jacobsen

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good.

— Samuel Johnson

I found you essay to be good and original. However, the part that was original was not good and the part that was good was not original.

— Samuel Johnson

A man is original when he speaks the truth that has always been known to all good men.

— Patrick Kavanagh

The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.

— Arthur Koestler

Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met.

— Fran Lebowitz

It's easier to be original and foolish than original and wise.

— Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz

We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

No one can be profoundly original who does not avoid eccentricity.

— Andre Maurois

But it is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

— Herman Melville

A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.

— H. L. Mencken

All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.

— John Stuart Mill

Originality is the one thing unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.

— John Stuart Mill

Make a technical contribution; innovate, don't emulate.

— David Packer

The more intelligent one is, the more men of originality one finds. Ordinary people find no difference between men.

— Blaise Pascal

Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.

— Laurence J. Peter

Originality consists in trying to be like everybody else --and failing.

— Raymond Radiguet

I invent nothing, I rediscover.

— Auguste Rodin

When there is an original sound in the world, it makes a hundred echoes.

— John A. Shedd

The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what is unique.

— Isaac Bashevis Singer

Create your own method. Don't depend slavishly on mine. Make up something that will work for you! But keep breaking traditions, I beg you.

— Konstantin Stanislavisky

To put away one's own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.

— Barbara Tuchman

Originality is nothing but judicious plagiarism.

— Voltaire

I see nothing in it new and valuable. What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable.

— Daniel Webster

Originate don't reiterate

— Jvongard

A man's originality is not only the most beautiful , but his best personality for humanity in life.

— Anuj Somany

The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

— Mark Twain