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Originality Quotes

Browse 753 quotes about Originality.

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Originality Quotes

“Universities are renowned for their tolerance of unusual characters, especially if they show originality and dedication to their research. I have often made the comment that not only are universities a 'cathedral' for worship of knowledge, they are also 'sheltered workshops' for the socially challenged.”

IfsMadeCharacterShowsWorshipResearchUniversityToleranceCommentUnusualDedicationOriginalityCathedralsWorkshopsRenowned
Book:The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome
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“Our lazy embrace of Stewart and Colbert is a testament to our own impoverished comic standards. We have come to accept coy mockery as genuine subversion and snarky mimesis as originality. It would be more accurate to describe our golden age of political comedy as the peak output of a lucrative corporate plantation whose chief export is a cheap and powerful opiate for progressive angst and rage.”

Would BeAgePoliticalPowerfulAcceptingComedyStandardsEmbraceRageGenuineGoldenChiefsComicCorporateLazyProgressiveOriginalityAccurateTestamentAngstMockeryOutputGolden AgeOpiatesPlantationsSubversionMimesis
Author:Steve Almond
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“I advise everyone to find an island in this life. Find a place where this culture can't take energy away from you, sap your will and originality. Since anything physical can be mental, that island can be your home. Turn off the electromagnetic waves being forced upon you, the countless invisible forces coming at you all the time.”

LifeInspirationalHomeTurnsCultureEnergyForceAdviceWillingFindingsWaveInvisibleThis LifeIslandsRapperMentalityOriginalityAdviseGood AdviceAway From YouTurn OffSapAdviserElectromagnetismElectromagnetic Waves
Book:The Tao of Wu
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“The term "rational" and its variants (rationality, rationalism) are used in a lot of contexts in economic debate, both positively and negatively, but nearly always sloppily or dishonestly. A specimen I've seen on more occasions than I can count is the line (usually presented with a sense of witty originality) "if you are opposed to economic rationalism, you must be in favor of economic irrationalism"... I've come to the conclusion that the word "rational" has no meaning that cannot better be conveyed by some alternative term and that the best advice is probably to avoid it altogether.”

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Author:John Quiggin
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“What tender and devoted mother wouldn't be dismayed and ill with terror at her son's or daughter's stepping even one hair's breath off the beaten track. No, better let him be happy and live in comfort without originality, is what every mother thinks when she rocks the cradle. The only person among us who can fail to reach the general's rank is the original man - in other words, the man who won't be quiet.”

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Author:Fyodor Dostoevsky
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“It is not possible to be original by trying to be original - those who attempt this in the arts will be merely avant-garde. Originality is the product of an impulse to intense and overwhelming that it bursts the conventions and produces something new - again more by accident than design.”

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Book:The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life makes it Hard to be Happy
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“Many have original minds who do not think it - they are led away by custom!”

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Book:John Keats - The Man Behind The Lyrics: Life, letters, and literary remains: Complete Letters and Two Extensive Biographies of one of the most beloved English Romantic poets
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“Charles Chaplin makes a million dollars a year out of a funny, shuffling walk and a pair of baggy trousers, because he does "something different." Take the hint and "individualize" yourself with some distinctive idea.”

YearsDoeIdeasDifferentWalksMillionsDollarsPairsOriginalityHintsMillion DollarsDistinctiveTrousersChaplinShuffling
Book:The Law of Success: The Master Wealth-Builder's Complete and Original Lesson Plan forAchieving Your Dreams
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“In Japan we have the phrase, "Shoshin," which means "beginner's mind." Our "original mind" includes everything within itself. It is always rich and sufficient within itself. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything. It is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.”

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Author:Shunryu Suzuki
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“The authour who imitates his predecessors only by furnishing himself with thoughts and elegances out of the same general magazine of literature, can with little more propriety be reproached as a plagiary, than the architect can be censured as a mean copier of Angelo or Wren, because he digs his marble out of the same quarry, squares his stones by the same art, and unites them in columns of the same orders.”

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Book:The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
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“No writer can be fully convicted of imitation except there is a concurrence of more resemblance than can be imagined to have happened by chance; as where the same ideas are conjoined without any natural series or necessary coherence, or where not only the thought but the words are copied.”

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Book:The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With Murphy's Essay
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“As not every instance of similitude can be considered as a proof of imitation, so not every imitation ought to be stigmatised as plagiarism. The adoption of a noble sentiment, or the insertion of a borrowed ornament, may sometimes display so much judgment as will almost compensate for invention; and an inferior genius may, without any imputation of servility, pursue the paths of the ancients, provided he declines to tread in their footsteps.”

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Book:The Beauties of Johnson: Consisting of Maxims and Observations, Moral, Critical, and Miscellaneous
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“To exact of every man who writes that he should say something new, would be to reduce authors to a small number; to oblige the most fertile genius to say only what is new, would be to contract his volumes to a few pages. Yet, surely, there ought to be some bounds to repetition; libraries ought no more to be heaped for ever with the same thoughts differently expressed, than with the same books differently decorated.”

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Book:The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
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