Quotes About Originality

I think true originality is perpetual. It's always rolling along. True originality is not like this award or trophy you get if you do something weird. It's with you if you have it, and it's still rolling along somewhere, you just gotta go find it. It takes time to reach that point, and understand true originality... I think we all can find it.

Wherein lies a poet's claim to originality? That he invents his incidents? No. That he was present when his episodes had their birth? No. That he was first to repeat them? No. None of these things has any value. He confers on them their only originality that has any value, and that is his way of telling them.

Originality consists of returning to the origin. Thus, originality means returning, through one's resources, to the simplicity of the early solutions.

To me, everything is endless variations on other things. Like waves in the ocean. They continue to turn over on each other, and they're all slightly different. I don't know if originality is possible. Is it even necessary? Because everything is different than what came before, but it's all branches from the same tree. Originality is overrated, but what you do with things is always different.

Style; all who have it have have one thing: originality.

Originality is in the eye of the beholder.

Our schools offer no conception of the scientific process of discovery. They do not encourage creative thought, in fact, they stifle it through too much rigidity in teaching. If we set out to give as little help as possible to originality in science, we could hardly devise a better plan than our education system. Youngsters ought to be told what is unknown about ourselves and our universe as well as what is known.

I always try to improve, to find new ways of expressing myself, to keep looking for truth and originality.

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.

When it comes to fashion, I'm just inspired by anyone who has their own flair or piece on anything. I love originality. I love when people bring some bold and don't do what's been done or being done. I don't think I have anyone in particular. Just anyone who's original really inspires me.

Originality usually amounts only to plagiarizing something unfamiliar.

The principal mark of genius is not perfection, but originality.

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

The incompatibility of aquacity with the erratic originality of genius.

Originality is really important.

[The] erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardised citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.

The Great don't innovate, they fertilize seeds planted by lackeys, they leave to others the inhaling of the flowers whose roots they've manured. A deceptive memory may be the key to their originality.

What you have felt and thought will by itself invent a new style, so that when people talk about style they are always a little astonished at the newness of it, because they think that it is only style that they are talking about, when what they are talking about is the attempt to express a new idea with such force that it will have the originality of the thought.It is an awfully lonesome business, and, as you know, I never wanted you to go into it, but if you are going into it at all, I want you to go into it knowing the sort of things that took me years to learn.

The heartbeat of your originality is deep within a body of thought that continually wrestles with the contradictions and limitations that we're constantly trying to overcome, the curiosities and the ignorances of the people we seek to help.

The genius is the man who has genuine and deep human relations with others, who does not cut himself off in the search for originality, but who realizes the value of artistic tradition.

Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.

Like the theater, offering food and hospitality to people is a matter of showmanship, and no matter how simple the performance, unless you do it well, with love and originality, you have a flop on your hands.

My originality consists in putting the logic of the visible to the service of the invisible.

True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision. That new, that personal, vision is attained only by looking long enough at the object represented to make it the writer's own; and the mind which would bring this secret gem to fruition must be able to nourish it with an accumulated wealth of knowledge and experience.

Schools teach you to imitate. If you don't imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A's. Originality on the other hand could get you anything -- from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it.

Originality is when you mix two things that haven't been mixed.

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.

The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even - if you will - eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with.

Creativity is the defeat of habit by imposing originality and change.

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.

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.

Utter originality is, of course, out of the question.

As a rule, I am very careful to be shallow and conventional where depth and originality are wasted.

Whatever laudable qualities the English may possess in their selection, preparation, and consumption of food, elegance, originality, diversity, and imagination are not among them.

A man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with that which we did not originate. To discover something wholly new can be a matter of chance, of idle tinkering, or even of the chronic dissatisfaction of the untalented.

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.

Originality implies a return to the origins, original is returning to the simplicity of the first solutions.

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