Quotes About Originality

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else. Margaret Mead, anthropologist (1901–78) F

You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts because if you write with someone looking over you shoulder, you'll never write.

But active programming consists of the design of new programs, rather than contemplation of old programs.

Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.

Don't live a life you copy from others, it's definitely going to be complicated to you.

I'm not like them, but I can pretend.

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.

In fact, being a unique individual is as much of a farce as trying to be like everyone else. Maybe more.

I just want to make my music, and I want it to stand on its own.

I am what is mine. Personality is the original personal property.

To listen through aural debris to Francesco Tamagno (1850–1905), Verdi's original Otello, or to Alessandro Moreschi (1858–1922), the last castrato, is a fascinating experience but one that cannot be endured for much longer than holding one's head down a wishing well. The pitch is wobbly, the static obtrusive and any impression of the singer's musicality requires an imaginative leap on the listener's part.

The mark of mediocrity is to look for precedent.

Obsesia premiilor semnific? o frustrare deloc stimulativ?. Crea?ia în art? fiind a solitudinii ?i originalit??ii, nu a onorurilor ?i reclamei...

Do not be awe struck by other people and try to copy them. Nobody can be you as efficiently as you can.

A slavish concern for the composition of words is the sign of a bankrupt intellect. Be gone, odious wasp! You smell of decayed syllables.

Die Welt muß romantisiert werden. So findet man den ursprünglichen Sinn wieder. Romantisieren ist nichts, als eine qualitative Potenzierung. Das niedre Selbst wird mit einem bessern Selbst in dieser Operation identifiziert. (…) Indem ich dem Gemeinen einen hohen Sinn, dem Gewöhnlichen ein geheimnisvolles Ansehn, dem Bekannten die Würde des Unbekannten, dem Endlichen einen unendlichen Schein gebe so romantisiere ich es.

The obsession with originality is a *coarse* scholarly egotism. Whoever is incapable of treating every foreign thought as though it were his own, and a personal thought as though it were foreign—is no true scholar.

Write what you like; there is no other rule.

I'm trying to speak--to write-the truth. I"m trying to be clear. I'm not interested in being fancy, or even original. Clarity and truth will be plenty, if I can only achieve them.

I'm trying to speak–to write-the truth. I"m trying to be clear. I'm not interested in being fancy, or even original. Clarity and truth will be plenty, if I can only achieve them.

In the world of mules There are no rules.

We marvel why, among the most progressive Western nations, architecture should be so devoid of originality, so replete with repetitions of obsolete styles. Perhaps we are passing through an age of democratisation in art, while awaiting the rise of some princely master who shall establish a new dynasty. Would that we loved the ancients more and copied them less! It has been said that the Greeks were great because they never drew from the antique.

Uniformity of design was considered as fatal to the freshness of imagination.

I cannot be someone other than I am. How awful.