Original Thought Quotes

• Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Women, People, Originality

  FaceBook post by Fran Lebowitz from Jan 14, 2011

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• One original thought is worth a thousand mindless quotings

  Diogenes

  Inspirational, Quoting, Mindless

  Attributed to Diogenes of Sinope in "Let a simile be your umbrella" by William Safire (p. 364), 2001.

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• Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Workout, Book, New Relationship

  Abraham Lincoln (1999). “The Wit & Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: A Treasury of Quotations, Anecdotes, and Observations”, Gramercy

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• Only those with no memory insist on their originality.

  Coco Chanel

  Memories, Originality, Brilliant

  "Readers recommend: songs that sample, recycle and reinvent" by Peter Kimpton, www.theguardian.com. November 20, 2014.

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• A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Political, Originality, Absence

  "Gaudy Night". Book by Dorothy L. Sayers, 1936.

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• The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of cliches. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.

  H. L. Mencken

  Mistake, Men, Thinking

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• I always have a quotation for everything - it saves original thinking.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Atheist, Work, Thinking

  Have His Carcase ch. 4 (1932)

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• We would have to invent the U.N if we did not have it which is not an original thought.

  Shirley Temple

  Originals, Ifs

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.

  H. L. Mencken

  Society, Literature, Originality

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.20, Knopf

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• I've never had an original thought in my lifeand there's tons of people on the internet happy to tell me just that.

  Shepard Fairey

  People, Internet, Originals

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• One original thought is worth the sum total of human knowledge, because it advances the sum total of human knowledge by that one original thought.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Humans, Originals, Human Knowledge

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• One Original Thought is worth 1000 Meaningless Quotes.

  Banksy

  Originals, Meaningless

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• I would rather be the author of one original thought than conqueror of a hundred battles. Yet moral excellence is so much superior to intellectual, that I ought to esteem one virtue more valuable than a hundred original thoughts.

  William Benton Clulow

  Excellence, Intellectual, Battle

  William Benton Clulow (1843). “Aphorisms and Reflections: A Miscellany of Thought and Opinion”, p.295

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• Revolution as an ideal concept always preserves the essential content of the original thought: sudden and lasting betterment.

  Johan Huizinga

  Aquariums, Essentials, Revolution

  "In the Shadow of Tomorrow". Book by Johan Huizinga, Ch. 2, 1936.

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• I feel like everything is inspired by something else. There is no 100 percent original thought.

  Ne-Yo

  Inspired, Feels, Percent

  "Singer-songwriter Ne-Yo". "The Tavis Smiley show", www.pbs.org. February 16, 2011.

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• The most necessary task of civilization is to teach people how to think. It should be the primary purpose of our public schools. The mind of a child is naturally active, it develops through exercise. Give a child plenty of exercise, for body and brain. The trouble with our way of educating is that it does not give elasticity to the mind. It casts the brain into a mold. It insists that the child must accept. It does not encourage original thought or reasoning, and it lays more stress on memory than observation.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Children, Memories, Stress

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• Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Art, Truth, Creativity

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Virtue and Vice: A Dictionary of the Good Life”, p.12, Harper Collins

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• No original thought still exists. People are original, each one of them. The same ideas that others had before you are waiting for you to bring them back to life in a new way. The part of who you are that is left behind within these old ideas is what makes them original all over again.

  Ashly Lorenzana

  Origin Of Life, Ideas, People

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• The discoveries of science, the works of art are explorations - more, are explosions, of a hidden likeness. The discoverer or artist presents in them two aspects of nature and fuses them into one. This is the act of creation, in which an original thought is born, and it is the same act in original science and original art.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Art, Science, Discovery

  "Science and Human Values". Book by Jacob Bronowski, 1956.

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• Original thoughts can be understood only in virtue of the unoriginal elements which they contain.

  Vittorio Alfieri

  Elements, Virtue, Understood

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• If there's an original thought out there, I could use one right now.

  Bob Dylan

  Use, Originality, Right Now

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• When we have the same thought again, the line of the original thought is deepened, causing what's called a memory trace. With each repetition the trace goes deeper and deeper, forming and embedding a pattern of thought. When an emotion is tied to this thought pattern, the memory trace grows exponentially stronger.

  Lysa TerKeurst

  Memories, Stronger, Lines

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• Religion disapproves of original thought the way Dracula does sunlight.

  Pat Condell

  Inspirational, Life, Doe

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• An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them.

  Stephen Fry

  Funny, Witty, Book

  Stephen Fry (2010). “The Liar”, p.54, Random House

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• I had a date with a girl I called the parrot. All she did was repeat everything I said. She never had an original thought of her own. Everything I liked, she liked. Everything I hated, she hated. It was annoying!

  Justin Chon

  Girl, Annoying, Parrots

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