Originality Quotes - Page 16

• Originality irritates so obscurely that people may have to evolve to scratch it.

  Steve Aylett

  People, Scratches, May

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• I, myself, was always recognized . . . as the “slow one” in the family. It was quite true, and I knew it and accepted it. Writing and spelling were always terribly difficult for me. My letters were without originality. I was . . . an extraordinarily bad speller and have remained so until this day.

  Agatha Christie

  Writing, Letters, Accepted

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• Derivative writers seem versatile because they imitate many others, past and present. Artistic originality has only itself to copy.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Past, Derivatives, Artistic

  1967 Interview in the Paris Review, Summer.

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• As long as you can Houdini your way out of the Sisyphean constraints then originality happens.

  David Mitchell

  Long, Way, Houdini

  "David Mitchell at Writers and Readers week, New Zealand". "The Book Show" with Ramona Koval, www.abc.net.au. March 30, 2008.

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• Every man has a specific skill, whether it is discovered or not, that more readily and naturally comes to him than it would to another, and his own should be sought and polished. He excels best in his niche - originality loses its authenticity in one's efforts to obtain originality.

  Criss Jami

  Men, Skills, Effort

  Criss Jami (2011). “Salomé: In Every Inch in Every Mile”, p.133, Criss Jami

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• To prepare youth for success in entrepreneurial (and free) cultures, education tends to emphasize originality, creativity, breadth, depth and leadership skills rather than rote memorization, standardized curricula or socialization. The latter skill set is vital in societies with strong upper classes employing the lower castes, but the former is essential to free democratic nations.

  Oliver DeMille

  Strong, Creativity, Class

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• Writing itself, if not misunderstood and abused, becomes a way of empowering the writing self. It converts anger and disappointment into deliberate and durable aggression, the writer's main source of energy. It converts sorrow and self-pity into empathy, the writer's main means of relating to otherness. Similarly, his wounded innocence turns into irony, his silliness into wit, his guilt into judgment, his oddness into originality, his perverseness into his stinger.

  Ted Solotaroff

  Disappointment, Mean, Writing

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• Small business people have gotten us out of nearly all modern recessions - not by waiting for others to fix things or turning to government, but rather by applying leadership, inventiveness, creativity and originality.

  Oliver DeMille

  Creativity, Government, People

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• Self-projection is, more often than not, the move of the minor craftsman, of the tactics of the hour whose inherent weakness is, precisely, that of originality.

  George Steiner

  Moving, Self, Weakness

  George Steiner (1991). “Real Presences”, p.170, University of Chicago Press

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• It is not permitted to a man, who takes up pen or chisel, to seek originality, for passion is his only business, and he cannot but mould or sing after a new fashion because no disaster is like another.

  William Butler Yeats

  Fashion, Passion, Men

  William Butler Yeats (1998). “Mythologies”, p.339, Simon and Schuster

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• Every true poet, I thought, must be original and originality a condition of poetic genius; so that each poet is like a species in nature (not an individuum genericum or specificum ) and can never recur. That nothing shd. be old or borrowed however cannot be.

  Gerard Manley Hopkins

  Genius, Poetic, Very True

  Gerard Manley Hopkins (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Illustrated)”, p.251, Delphi Classics

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• No one wants my painting because it is different from other people's peculiar, crazy public that demands the greatest possible degree of originality on the painter's part and yet won't accept him unless his work resembles that of the others!

  Paul Gauguin

  Crazy, People, Want

  Paul Gauguin (1978). “The writings of a savage”, Viking Adult

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• It may be expecting too much to expect most intellectuals to have common sense, when their whole life is based on their being uncommon -- that is, saying things that are different from what everyone else is saying. There is only so much genuine originality in anyone. After that, being uncommon means indulging in pointless eccentricities or clever attempts to mock or shock.

  Thomas Sowell

  Clever, Mean, Common Sense

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Ever Wonder Why?: and Other Controversial Essays”, p.328, Hoover Press

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• originality" is everyone's aim, and novel techniques are as much prized as new scientific discoveries. [T.S.] Eliot states it with surprising naïveté: "It is exactly as wasteful for a poet to do what has been done already as for a biologist to rediscover Mendel's discoveries.

  Randall Jarrell

  Discovery, Done, Technique

  "Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964". Book by Randall Jarrell, "The End of the Line" (pp. 79 - 80), 1980.

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• This sucks on so many levels." Dialogue from "Jason X" Rare for a movie to so frankly describe itself. "Jason X" sucks on the levels of storytelling, character development, suspense, special effects, originality, punctuation, neatness and aptness of thought.

  Roger Ebert

  Character, Special, Jason

  Roger Ebert (2004). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2005”, p.340, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on December 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. The film has been directed without grace, vision, or originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialog, it will not be because you admire them.

  Roger Ebert

  Two, Grace, Vision

  "Pearl Harbor" by Roger Ebert, www.rogerebert.com. May 25, 2001.

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• Originality in literature is only a new coat of paint on an old house.

  Austin O'Malley

  House, Literature, Coats

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• Originality is something that is easily exaggerated, especially by authors contemplating their own work.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Contemplating, Exaggerated

  John Kenneth Galbraith (1998). “The Affluent Society”, p.16, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Dedication to quality, community, and originality without exception.

  Zach Klein

  Dedication, Community, Quality

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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.

  Steve Almond

  Powerful, Political, Lazy

  "The Joke’s on You" by Steve Almond, The Baffler, No. 20, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 19, 2012.

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• To achieve originality we need to abandon the comforts of habit, reason, and the approval of our peers, and strike out in new directions.

  Marty Neumeier

  Comfort, Needs, Peers

  Marty Neumeier (2005). “The Brand Gap, Revised Edition”, p.76, Peachpit Press

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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.

  RZA

  Inspirational, Life, Home

  The RZA (2009). “The Tao of Wu”, p.21, Penguin

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• Originality is a return to the origin.

  Antonio Gaudi

  Return

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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.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Daughter, Mother, Creativity

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• Now in creative thought common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgement is that the new ideas shall look like the old ones. In other words it can only work by suppressing originality.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Creativity, Ideas, Common Sense

  Alfred North Whitehead (1958). “An Introduction to Mathematics”, p.116, New York : Oxford University Press, 1958 [c1948]

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