Originality Quotes - Page 18

• 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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• Our purity lies in our originality. Our intuition lies in our innocence.

  Harbhajan Singh Yogi

  Inspirational, Lying, Bhajans

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• Photography is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one's own originality. It's a way of life.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Way, Shouting

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• Writers tend to consider distinction and originality as virtues, but they are anathema to publishers.

  Thomas M. Disch

  Writing, Virtue, Anathema

  Thomas M. Disch (2000). “The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World”, p.211, Simon and Schuster

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• I've done really well so far in my career by trusting the audience to be as dissatisfied with convention as I am, as a film-goer. You want to go see a film that surprises you in some way.

  Christopher Nolan

  Careers, Done, Want

  Christopher Nolan, Jonah Nolan (2010). “Inception: The Shooting Script”, p.18, Insight Editions

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• The bad teacher imposes his ideas and his methods on his pupils, and such originality as they may have is lost in the second-rate art of imitation.

  Stephen Neill

  Teacher, Art, Teaching

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• May you discover your own special abilities and contribute them toward a better world.

  Charlene Costanzo

  Over You, Special, World

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• Last summer I was staying at a house in Hampshire which was famous for the brilliance and the originality of its gardens. There were many of them, but the most beautiful of all was a walled garden in which every flower was blue. There were all the obvious things like delphiniums and acronitums and larkspurs, but the most beautiful blue of all came from the groups of cabbages - the ordinary blue pickling cabbage. Set against the blazing blue of the other flowers, it had a bloom and elegance which made it a thing of the greatest delight.

  Beverley Nichols

  Beautiful, Summer, Flower

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• It is always better to be an original than an imitation.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Imitation, Originals

  Theodore Roosevelt, Paul H. Jeffers (1998). “The Bully Pulpit: A Teddy Roosevelt Book of Quotations”, p.20, Taylor Trade Publications

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• Frivolity, under whatever form it appears, deprives attention of its power, thought of its originality, and sentiment of its depth.

  Madame de Stael

  Depth, Attention, Form

  "Corinne, or Italy". Book by Madame de Stael, 1807.

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• Not like Homer would I write, Not like Dante if I might, Not like Shakespeare at his best, Not like Goethe or the rest, Like myself, however small, Like myself, or not at all.

  William Allingham

  Writing, Might, Ifs

  William Allingham (1884). “Blackberries picked off many bushes, by D. Pollex and others, put in a basket [verse, really written] by W. Allingham”

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• Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with; as if, observes our author himself, any originality but our own could be expected to content us! In fact all strange thing are apt, without fault of theirs, to estrange us at first view, and unhappily scarcely anything is perfectly plain, but what is also perfectly common.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Views, Firsts, Faults

  Thomas Carlyle, Henry Duff Traill (2010). “The Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.11, Cambridge University Press

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• In my actual imaginative contact with life, I am vastly more responsive to beauty than to horror - indeed, I never experience real cosmic horror except in infrequent nightmares. However, when I come to record my various imaginative experiences, I generally find that only the horror items have any uniqueness or originality. Others have seen the same beautiful things that I have seen, & have sung them more nobly.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Beautiful, Real, Records

  Letter to Elizabeth Toldridge (8 March 1929), in "Selected Letters II, 1925-1929" edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, (pp. 316-317), 1968.

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• To overestimate the originality of one's thoughts is perhaps a less serious defect than being unaware of their newness. There is a more pronounced lack of sensitivity in underestimating (ourselves and others) than in overestimating.

  Eric Hoffer

  Serious, Underestimate, Sensitivity

  "Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook" by Tom Bethell in Harper's Magazine, July 2005.

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• 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.

  James Beard

  Simple, Offering, Hands

  James Beard (2015). “Delights and Prejudices”, p.212, Open Road Media

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• I always took a great deal of pride in being original.

  Roger Miller

  Pride, Being Original, Deals

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• A good imitation is the most perfect originality

  Voltaire

  Perfect, Imitation

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• Detach the writer from the milieu where he has experienced his greatest sense of belonging, and you have created a discontinuity within his personality, a short circuit in his identity. The result is his originality, his creativity comes to an end. He becomes the one-book novelist or the one-trilogy writer.

  Henry Roth

  Book, Creativity, Personality

  1987 'The Eternal Plebeian and Other Matters', in Shifting Landscape.

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• Credentials have been a problem for a long time in my work. Originality has been my strength, and credentials and academia have not been.

  Budd Hopkins

  Long, Academia, Problem

  "Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference". Book by Andrea Pritchard, p. 134, 1994.

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• Nast is an artist of uncommon abilities. His works evince originality of conception, freedom of manner, lofty appreciation of national ideas and action, and a large artistic instinct.

  James Jackson Jarves

  Appreciation, Artist, Ideas

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• To admire on principle is the only way to imitate without loss of originality.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Art, Philosophy, Loss

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1834). “Biographia Literaria: Or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions”, p.58

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