Quotes About Imitation

The story of Doubting Thomas is told, not so that we shall admire Thomas, but so that we can admire the other apostles in comparison. Thomas demanded evidence … The other apostles, whose faith was so strong that they did not need evidence, are held to us as worthy of imitation.

We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'.

Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.

The parrot/writer feebly accepts language as something received, imitative and inert

Basic male display behaviour of the period, determinedly individualistic while actually dependent on a strict imitation of prevailing norms (...)

Or, perhaps you thought I might ape your blessed Kannan, stealing ghee and curds from the homes of the Gopis, getting beaten up with churners and—" Azhwarkkadiyaan

the true followers of Jesus imitated his kenosis. As the Christ Hymn had pointed out, Jesus had achieved his high status only by emptying himself and accepting death on a cross.

Contrary to our metaphors, humans are much more imitative than the other apes. For example: if chimps watch a demonstration on how to get food out of a puzzle box, they, in their turn, skip any unnecessary steps, go straight to the treat. Human children overimitate, reproducing each step regardless of its necessity. There is some reason why, now that it's our behavior, being slavishly imitative is superior to being thoughtful and efficient, but I forget exactly what that reason is.

Human children overimitate, reproducing each step regardless of its necessity. There is some reason why, now that it's our behavior, being slavishly imitative is superior to being thoughtful and efficient

How little inventiveness there is in man, Grave copier of copies.

A vain man can never be altogether rude. Desirous as he is of pleasing, he fashions his manners after those of others.

Men are so constituted that every one undertakes what he sees another successful in, whether he has aptitude for it or not.

There is religion in everything around us, - a calm and holy religion in the unbreathing things of Nature, which man would do well to imitate.

Men who ape the saint and play the sinner.

Being abroad makes you conscious of the whole imitative side of human behavior. The ape in man.

Men walk almost always in the paths trodden by others, proceeding in their actions by imitation.

No bird has ever uttered note That was not in some first bird's throat; Since Eden's freshness and man's fall No rose has been original.

Children (nay, and men too) do most by example.

Yves Saint Laurent is a young man of excellent taste; the more he copies me the more taste he displays.

No man can in any measure resemble the scripture saints.

My life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man, I'm just a living legacy to the leader of the band.

An imitator is a man who succeeds in being an imitation.

For behavior, men learn it, as they take diseases, one of another.

A man always writes absolutely well whenever he writes in his own manner, but the wigmaker who tries to write like Gellert ... writes badly.