Quotes About Originality

You don't have to be just like everybody else … there is another way.

How can you fail at being yourself

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in Literary Ethics in 1838, Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning anecdote, all flock to their aid. What a beautiful thought. Stay with tradition and you ensure that you'll always be the same, but toss it aside, and the world is yours to use as creatively as you choose.

be authentic in all of your interactions.

Él se limitó a sonreír y dijo—: Algunos de nosotros tenemos un acabado mate, otros satinado, otros esmaltado.... —él se volvió hacia mí—. Pero de vez en cuando conoces a alguien que es iridiscente, y cuando ocurre, no hay nada comparable.

Some of us get dipped in flat, some in satin, some in gloss but every once in a while you find someone who's iridescent, and when you, nothing will compare

Novelty is a new kind of loneliness.

An artist cannot fail it is a success to be one.

You took her as she was. She wasn't trying to impress anyone," said Claude Nunnelly.

People think of the inventor as a screwball, but no one ever asks the inventor what he thinks of other people.

At the same time, he studiously avoided becoming a textbook player. He wanted to blend the best of the received wisdom into a refined version of his crazy-seeming "harum scarum" style. He wanted to play a slightly different game than everyone else was playing, to be out of sync with the anticipated rhythms, protocols, and conventions.

Be yourself. No one can say you're doing it wrong.

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and wonder if my life would be different if I had to do it over... Then a voice comes to me out of the dark that says, "boy, there's an original thought!

I've been thinking... Maybe you're a mockingbird... Mockingbirds imitate the songs of other birds... No, I've never heard of any copyright problems.

Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that's easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can play weird-- that's easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple complicated is commonplace--making the complicated simple, awesomely simple--that's creativity.

Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships.

Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all others were making ships.

Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean (merely average performance).

There is a certain way of being human that is my way. I am called upon to live my life in this way, and not in imitation of anyone else's life. But this notion gives a new importance to being true to myself. If I am not, I miss the point of my life; I miss what being human is for me .

Herder put forward the idea that each of us has an original way of being human. Each person has his or her own "measure" is his way of putting it. This idea has entered very deep into modern consciousness. It is also new. Before the late eighteenth century no one thought that the differences between human beings had this kind of moral significance.

I invented a new word today: plagiarism.

What the audience heard was like nothing they had ever encountered.

But no verse, not Stanhope's, not Shakespeare's, not Dante's could rival the original, and this was the original, and the verse was but the best translation of a certain manner of its life. The glory of poetry could not outshine the clear glory of the certain fact, and not any poetry could hold as many meanings as the fact.