Quotes & Sayings About Originality

People of different dispositions make the world go round. That's why it's insanity to try to be someone else. — Ufuoma Apoki

Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature. — Jean Cocteau

Dissenting opinions are useful even when they're wrong. So instead of speaking to highly agreeable audiences, target suggestions to people with a history of originality. — Adam Grant

Steve Grand is the creator of what I think is the nearest approach to artificial life so far, and his first book, Creation: Life and How to Make It, is as interesting as you would expect. But he illuminates more than just the properties of life: his originality extends to matter itself and the very nature of reality. Not since David Deutsch's The Fabric of Reality have I encountered such a compelling invitation to think everything out afresh, from the bottom up. — Richard Dawkins

The question for the ultimate foundations and the ultimate meaning of mathematics remains open; we do not know in which direction it will find its final solution nor even whether a final objective answer can be expected at all. "Mathematizing" may well be a creative activity of man, like language or music, of primary originality, whose historical decisions defy complete objective rationalization. — Hermann Weyl

The true is inimitable, the false untransformable. — Robert Bresson

Because of this, originality consists in returning to the origin. — Antoni Gaudi

It is remarkable that when great discoveries are effected, their simplicity always seems to detract from their originality: on these occasions we are reminded of the egg of Columbus! — Benjamin Disraeli

Suppose Mozart had tried to be original? It would have been like a man at the North Pole trying to walk north, and this is true of all of the rest of us. Striving after originality takes you far away from your true self, and makes your work mediocre. — Keith Johnstone

Stand up.
Stand out.
Stand firm.
Stand strong. — Matshona Dhliwayo

In America, the materio-economic conditions relate to a societal, multi-group existence in a way never before know in world history. American Negro nationalism can never create its own values, find its revolutionary significance, define its political and economic goals, until Negro intellectuals take up the cudgels against the cultural imperialism practiced in all of its manifold ramifications on the Negro within American culture. But this kind of revolution would have to be predicated on the recognition that the cultural and artistic originality of the American nation is founded, historically, on the ingredients of a black aesthetic and artistic base. — Harold Cruse

I no longer find such pleasure in that preeminently good society, of which I was once so fond. It seems to me that beneath a cloak of clever talk it proscribes all energy, all originality. If you are not a copy, people accuse you of being ill-mannered. — Stendhal

When most of the greatest individuals in history were misunderstood and you've spent so much of your own adult life misunderstood, you can't help but believe that the majority of people know very little worth knowing. — Criss Jami

Let me not follow in the clamor of the world, but walk calmly in my path ... — Max Ehrmann

Knock-offs may look good, but they never last as long as the real thing. — N.M. Silber

Literature is too full of 'acknowledgments' and squabbles about originality ... — George Bernard Shaw

Originality is way overrated. To make, you need to take. All great artists do. — Walter Darby Bannard

An invitation to innovation, Radiant Orchid encourages expanded creativity and originality, which is increasingly valued in today's society. — Leatrice Eiseman

Boredom is useful to me when I notice it and think: Oh I'm bored; there must be something else I want to be doing ... boredom acts as an initiator of originality by pushing me into new activities or new thoughts. — Hugh Prather

It may be expecting too much to expect most intellectuals to have common sense, when their whole life is based on their being uncommon
that is, saying things that are different from what everyone else is saying. There is only so much genuine originality in anyone. After that, being uncommon means indulging in pointless eccentricities or clever attempts to mock or shock. — Thomas Sowell

A designer ... has the true responsibility to give his audiences not what they think they want, for this is almost invariably the usual, the accustomed, the obvious, and hence, the unspontaneous. Rather, he should provide that quality of thought and intuition which rejects the ineffectual commonplace for effectual originality. — Lester Beall

Design is not the act of amazing an audience with the novelty of forms or materials; it is the originality that repeatedly extracts astounding ideas from the crevices of the very commonness of everyday life. — Kenya Hara

The general advertisers and their agencies know almost nothing for sure, because they cannot measure the results of their advertising. They worship at the altar of creativity, which really means 'originality': The most dangerous word in the lexicon of advertising — David Ogilvy

Mockery is childish. It does not become you. — Veronica Roth

The difference between eccentricity and originality in historical studies is often difficult to detect at first encounter. When a radically new interpretation of a large segment of history makes its appearance, time is needed to sift the evidence. — Edmund Morgan

What is originality? To see something that has no name as yet and hence cannot be mentioned although it stares us all in the face. The way men usually are, it takes a name to make something visible for them. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Think outside the box? Indeed. But to add balance to that, one should not in the process forget what the inside of the box looks like as well. Those who are best at thinking outside the box do it not to puff themselves up, but to see how small they really are. As a contented fish in its fish tank appears to have a small, boring existence to us, imagine a larger, more perceptive kingdom (even by scientific taxonomy) to whom our contented existences may appear to be small and boring. This is where true creativity and massive perceptive abilities spawn a sense of intellectual humility; the kind which God adores. — Criss Jami

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

All good things which exist are the fruits of originality. — John Stuart Mill

Should we all confess our sins to one another we would all laugh at one another for our lack of originality — Khalil Gibran

What audiences end up with word-wise is a hackneyed, completely derivative copy of old Hollywood romances, a movie that reeks of phoniness and lacks even minimal originality. — Kenneth Turan

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

The thing that I was brought up to prize above everything else is the intellect. There is no problem that the intellect cannot solve, but it never had an original thought. Originality is the realm of the unconscious. — Alan Garner

Most people think an artist tries to be original, but originality is the last thing that develops in the artist. — Lukas Foss

It is specially characteristic of the German that the more servile he on the one hand is, the more uncontrolled is he on the other; restraint and want of restraint - originality, is the angel of darkness that buffets us. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

I rallied all the youth around me, all the people who liked Compa, but felt like it was dying, going away, being replaced with Zouk. So it became a movement. So, through the years, I've played my music with dedication, discipline and originality, and controversy also. — Michel Martelly

Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes. — Thomas W. Higginson

Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. As to my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to young ladies from boarding-schools. — Arthur Conan Doyle

When we reject our origins, we become the product of whatever soil that we find ourselves planted; the colors of our leaves change as we consume borrowed nutrients with borrowed roots and, like a tree, we grow. — Mike Norton

The scramble to get higher, to be seen, the cycle of creation and rebellion, everyone assuming they were saying something new or doing something new, something profound
when the truth was tat it had all been done a million billion times. — Jess Walter

What is originality? It is being one's self, and reporting accurately what we see and are. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Originality must compound with inheritance. — Harold Bloom

Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne a sceptred hermit, wrapped in the solitude of his own originality. — Charles Phillips

You will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it ... Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. — C.S. Lewis

Then she waited, with parted lips and a saucy challenge in her eyes, to see how her presence
the drama of being her
was registering. In the way of such chicks, she seemed convinced of the originality of her provocation. — Jonathan Franzen

Vanity is the fear of appearing original: it is thus a lack of pride, but not necessarily a lack of originality. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Disappointment leads to clarity, which leads to conviction and true originality. — Conan O'Brien

Do your own thing. Others own their own thing. If you copy too much, you'll find yourself in late night cocktail lounge cover band limbo. — Kurt Cobain

Last summer I was staying at a house in Hampshire which was famous for the brilliance and the originality of its gardens. There were many of them, but the most beautiful of all was a walled garden in which every flower was blue. There were all the obvious things like delphiniums and acronitums and larkspurs, but the most beautiful blue of all came from the groups of cabbages - the ordinary blue pickling cabbage. Set against the blazing blue of the other flowers, it had a bloom and elegance which made it a thing of the greatest delight. — Beverley Nichols

Any page by Paul Goodman will give you not only originality and brilliance but wisdom, that is, something to think about. He is our peculiar, urban, twentieth-century Thoreau, the quintessential American mind of our time. — Hayden Carruth

Every film has to be the next something else; originality isn't celebrated because you can't market it. — Nick Moran

Plus, if you're a copycat, you can never keep up. You're always in a passive position. You never lead; you always follow. You give birth to something that's already behind the times - just a knockoff, an inferior version of the original. That's no way to live. — Jason Fried

What a newspaper needs in its news, in its headlines, and on its editorial page is terseness, humor, descriptive power, satire, originality, good literary style, clever condensation and accuracy, accuracy, accuracy. — Joseph Pulitzer

Natural beauty is always tiresome. It lacks that careless touch of artifice that is the hallmark of true originality. There is nothing so overdone and vulgar as unspoilt simplicity. — Emily Croy Barker

The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know. — Arthur Koestler

Newton expected no money from establishing his originality but rather desired recognition for his excellence. — Tyler Cowen

A good imitation is the most perfect originality — Voltaire

We are the ORIGIN of our art, its homeland. Viewed this way, ORIGINALITY is the process of remaining true to ourselves. — Julia Cameron

All my originality consists?in giving life in human fashion to beings which are impossible according to the laws of possibility. — Odilon Redon

The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger. — W. Somerset Maugham

Nurture your
originality, don't ever bury it
away. — Alison G. Bailey

There's plenty of room for strangeness, mystery, originality, wildness, etc. in poems that also invite the reader into the human and alive center about which the poem circles. — Thomas Lux

When I wrote this song I felt pretty unoriginal because everybody writes love songs, and everybody feels like their love is the most important and when their love ends and they get their heart broken, that nobody understands. And ... that's ridiculous, but so am I. — Tegan Quin

The incompatibility of aquacity with the erratic originality of genius. — James Joyce

Conceit makes the way God deals with me personally the binding standard for others. — Oswald Chambers

It is altogether an extraordinary growing, swarming, glittering, pushing, chattering, good-natured, cosmopolitan place, and perhaps in some ways the best imitation of Paris that can be found (with a great originality of its own). — Henry James

Coolness is not an image that can be bought or worn. True cool is an attitude that is projected from a person who is extremely comfortable in their own skin. — Suzy Kassem

It is commonly said to my little friend Legion: Read the great writers for style. But I say to him: Read the great dead masters for ideas. Devour them, Fletcherize them, digest, assimilate, make them part of your blood; let the enriched blood visit your brain. The resultant activities will be fairly your own, and the little kinks and convolutions of your brain, which are entirely different from the kinks of any other brain, will furnish you all the style you will ever get.
There are no really fresh ideas; just as there is not any fresh air. Air and ideas are refreshed and refreshing, vitalized and vitalizing; but the thoughts have been thought before and the air has been breathed before. — Eugene Manlove Rhodes

People took the word "clean" out of context. My mother had an expression: "clean as a whistle, sharp as a tack." I inherited her originality. — Joe Biden

Let us be quite clear that the ideal is a paradox. Most of us, having grown up among the ruins of the chivalrous tradition, were taught in our youth that a bully is always a coward. Our first week at school refuted this lie, along with its corollary that a truly brave man is always gentle. It is a pernicious lie because it misses the real novelty and originality of the medieval demand upon human nature. Worse still, it represents as a natural fact something which is really a human ideal, nowhere fully attained, and nowhere attained at all without arduous discipline. It is refuted by history and Experience. Homer's Achilles knows nothing of the demand that the brave should also be the modest and the merciful. He kills men as they cry for quarter or takes them prisoner to kill them at leisure. — C.S. Lewis

Anything really new is repulsive, because it is abnormal and unreasonable. — Asger Jorn

The ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism cannot own up to its heavily derivative nature, it must enforce originality on the level of the sentence. — Malcolm Gladwell

What is it we value? Innovation. Originality. Novelty. But most importantly ... timeliness. I fear you may be too late, my confused, unfortunate, friend. — Brandon Sanderson

If there's an original thought out there, I could use one right now. — Bob Dylan

Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate but in what we do with that which we borrow from others. — Eric Hoffer

The small are always dependent on the great; they are "small" precisely because they think they are independent. The great thinker is one who can hear what is greatest in the work of other "greats" and who can transform it in an original manner. — Martin Heidegger

Originality, not Intelligence, is the sign of a brilliant Author. All the Education in the world won't help someone who can't think for themselves. — A.M. Sawyer

For people never say anything the same way twice; no two of them ever say it the same. The greatest imaginative writer that ever brooded in a lavender robe and a mellowed briar in his teeth, couldn't tell you, though e try for a lifetime, how the simplest strap-hanger will ask the conductor to be let off at the next stop ...
It is all for the taking. All the manuals by frustrated fictioneers on how to write can't give you the first syllable of reality, at any cot, that any common conversation can. All the classics, read and re-read, can't help you catch the ring of truth as does the word heard first-hand. — Nelson Algren

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

Creativity is the art of concealing your sources. — Coco Chanel

If people are always comfortable with you, you're probably not telling them the whole truth. — Aniekee Tochukwu Ezekiel

Is it possible to say "It was a beautiful morning at the end of November" without feeling like Snoopy? — Umberto Eco

Success is no proof of virtue. In the case of a book, quick acclaim is presumptive evidence of a lack of substance and originality. — Walter Kaufmann

We often mistake the original part of ourselves for a weakness. — Mason Cooley

People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us; and this goes on to the end. And after all, what can we call our own, except energy, strength, and will? If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, there would be but a small balance in my favor. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

In the expression of the emotions, originality merits the first consideration ... The words used, however, should be old ones. — Fujiwara No Teika

Detachment, lack of sentimentality, originality, a lot of things that sound rather empty. I know what they mean. Let's say, "visual impact" may not mean much to anybody. I could point it out though. I mean it's a quality that something has or does not have. Coherence. Well, some things are weak, some things are strong ... — Walker Evans

There was a part of me that felt afraid of people in Hollywood going: '**** Hollywood with their total lack of originality!'. — Colin Farrell

Our debt to tradition through reading and conversation is so massive, our protest so rare and insignificant-and this commonly on the ground of other reading and hearing-that in large sense, one would say there is no pure originality. All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. It is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Anyone who attempts anything original in the world must expect a bit of ridicule. — Alberto Juantorena

Admiring doesn't make you exactly like what you admire, admire yourself and you will be original and exactly how you wish and feel to be. — Auliq Ice

Originality is something that is easily exaggerated, especially by authors contemplating their own work. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Originality and creativity are nothing but the result of the wise management of combinations. The creative genius combines more rapidly, and with a greater critical sense of what gets tossed out and what gets saved, the same material that the failed genius has to work with. — Umberto Eco

To vest a few fallible men - prosecutors, judges, jurors - with vast powers of literary or artistic censorship, to convert them into what J.S. Mill called the "moral police" is to make them despotic arbiters of literary products ... If one day they ban mediocre books as obscene, another day they may do otherwise to a work of a genius. Originality, not too plentiful, should be cherished, not stifled. An author's imagination may be cramped if he must write with an eye on prosecutors or juries ... — Jerome Frank

True originality has its foundations in the soul, not in the mind, and when there is an effort to create something different it is usually a failure. Beethoven or Schumann or Chopin did not try to be original. They were original. — Ignacy Jan Paderewski

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

One possible sign of low self-esteem is suppressing parts of yourself so you can fill someone else's expectations of what you should be. You try to fill someone else's (or your own) prescription of perfection, instead of being yourself and embracing your originality. — Robin Meade

The hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring whether a better option exists. I've — Adam M. Grant

Originality is another criterion of aesthetic value. We may formulate an originality principle, according to which highly valuable works of art provide hitherto unavailable insights ... Notice that, although originality is a necessary condition of high aesthetic value, it is far from a sufficient condition. Many original works have little or no aesthetic value. An artwork may present a novel but uninteresting perspective, or one that is original but wrong. — James Young

The authentic rebel knows that the silencing of all his adversaries is the last thing on earth he wishes: their extermination would deprive him and whoever else remains alive from the uniqueness, the originality, and the capacity for insight that these enemies being human also have and could share with him. If we wish the death of our enemies, we cannot talk about the community of man. In the losing of the chance for dialogue with our enemies, we are the poorer. — Rollo May