Quotes and Sayings about Originality
"Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about."
- W. H. Auden
(Related: Originality, Writers)
"Originality is the essence of true scholarship. Creativity is the soul of the true scholar."
- Nnamdi Azikiwe
(Related: Soul, Creativity, Originality)
"Nearly all our originality comes from the stamp that time impresses upon our sensibility."
- Charles Baudelaire
(Related: Time, Originality, Sensibility)
"The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels."
- Simone de Beauvoir
(Related: Novelty, Originality, Writer)
"We shall be forced to attempt planned and directed research employing hundreds of workers for many years, and this cannot be done without risking the loss of independence and originality. This is a serious and fundamental obstacle but it may be overcome in two ways."
- John Desmond Bernal
(Related: Independence, Loss, May, Originality, Research, Workers, Years)
"About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment."
- Josh Billings
(Related: Hope, Judgment, Originality, Writer)
"The secret of all effective originality in advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships."
- Leo Burnett
(Related: Advertising, Creation, Originality, Relationships, Words)
"Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with."
- Thomas Carlyle
(Related: Originality, Quarrel)
"The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity."
- Thomas Carlyle
(Related: Merit, Novelty, Originality, Sincerity)
"Great success in examinations does naturally not as a rule go with originality of thought."
- Edward Carpenter
(Related: Success, Thought, Originality)
"Originality is really important."
- Jim Carrey
(Related: Originality)
"Cinema reflects culture and there is no harm in adapting technology, but not at the cost of losing your originality."
- Jackie Chan
(Related: Technology, Cinema, Culture, Harm, Losing, Originality)
"Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature."
- Jean Cocteau
(Related: Effect, Job, Light, Literature, Originality, Rest, Spontaneity, Youth)
"When I was coming up, we weren't trying to get a hit or get paid, we were just trying to do our thing. The only thing we were really trying to do was to be recognized for our originality."
- Bootsy Collins
(Related: Originality, Trying)
"Mistakes are the only universal form of originality."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Mistakes, Originality)
"Ice dance should not be seen as a rigid conformist form of figure skating. There is a great deal of freedom and originality to be had."
- Robin Cousins
(Related: Dance, Freedom, Originality)
"Knowing how to paint and to use one's colors rightly has not any connection with originality. This originality consists in properly expressing your own impressions."
- Thomas Couture
(Related: Colors, Connection, Originality)
"Most people think an artist tries to be original, but originality is the last thing that develops in the artist."
- Lukas Foss
(Related: People, Artist, Originality)
"Because of this, originality consists in returning to the origin."
- Antonio Gaudi
(Related: Originality)
"Originality usually amounts only to plagiarizing something unfamiliar."
- Katharine Fullerton Gerould
(Related: Originality)
"Originality exists in every individual because each of us differs from the others. We are all primary numbers divisible only by ourselves."
- Jean Guitton
(Related: Numbers, Originality)
"No art form points like poetry to this originality of language as to its essential and abiding concern."
- Thomas Harrison
(Related: Art, Poetry, Concern, Language, Originality)
"Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes."
- Thomas W. Higginson
(Related: Eyes, Originality)
"What is originality? Undetected plagiarism."
- Dean Inge
(Related: Originality, Plagiarism)
"Originality is undetected plagiarism."
- William Ralph Inge
(Related: Originality, Plagiarism)
"Originality is the art of concealing your source."
- Franklin P. Jones
(Related: Art, Originality)
"The principle mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers."
- Arthur Koestler
(Related: Genius, Originality, Perfection)
"The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know."
- Arthur Koestler
(Related: Art, Originality)
"The British feel of blues has been hard, rather than emotional. Far too much emphasis on 12 bar, too little attention to words, far too little originality."
- Alexis Korner
(Related: Attention, Originality, Words)
"When I came up, it was all about originality and collective research. There is an awful lot of imitation going on now."
- Steve Lacy
(Related: Imitation, Now, Originality, Research)
"I always try to improve, to find new ways of expressing myself, to keep looking for truth and originality."
- Burt Lancaster
(Related: Truth, Originality)
"Originality is independence, not rebellion; it is sincerity, not antagonism."
- George Henry Lewes
(Related: Independence, Originality, Rebellion, Sincerity)
"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
(Related: Art, Truth, Caring, Literature, Man, Originality, Will)
"The burden of originality is one that most people don't want to accept. They'd rather sit in front of the TV and let that tell them what they're supposed to like, what they're supposed to buy, and what they're supposed to laugh at."
- Marilyn Manson
(Related: People, Burden, Originality, Want)
"The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger."
- W. Somerset Maugham
(Related: Anger, Thought, First, Habits, Originality, World)
"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."
- Herman Melville
(Related: Imitation, Originality, Succeed)
"Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of."
- John Stuart Mill
(Related: Originality)
"All good things which exist are the fruits of originality."
- John Stuart Mill
(Related: Originality)
"As a rule, I am very careful to be shallow and conventional where depth and originality are wasted."
- Lucy Maud Montgomery
(Related: Originality)
"Just keep thinking about the good side of ADD - the creativity and the originality it can stimulate."
- David Neeleman
(Related: Creativity, Originality, Thinking)
"I think it's a great document of John Stevens' originality. At that time he was already much more fully formed in his conception than I was. I was sort of struggling to keep up, and sometimes it's pretty obvious."
- Evan Parker
(Related: Time, Obvious, Originality, Pretty)
"The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men."
- Blaise Pascal
(Related: Men, Difference, Intellect, Originality)
"Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it."
- Laurence J. Peter
(Related: Art, Originality)
"Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality."
- Beatrix Potter
(Related: Goodness, Originality, School)
"Originality consists in trying to be like everybody else and failing."
- Raymond Radiguet
(Related: Originality, Trying)
"I love romantic comedies. I like to watch them and I like to be in them. It's something that's increasingly difficult to find that spark of originality that makes if different than the ones that come before."
- Julia Roberts
(Related: Love, Originality, Romantic)
"Originality depends only on the character of the drawing and the vision peculiar to each artist."
- Georges Seurat
(Related: Character, Vision, Artist, Originality)
"A man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage."
- George Bernard Shaw
(Related: Courage, Common sense, Man, Meaning, Originality, Taste)
"He's a man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage."
- George Bernard Shaw
(Related: Courage, Common sense, Man, Meaning, Originality, Taste)
"But the French writers always had more originality and independence than others, and that regulator, which elsewhere was religion, long since ceased to exist for them."
- Henryk Sienkiewicz
(Related: Religion, Independence, Originality, Writers)
"Originality is not seen in single words or even in sentences. Originality is the sum total of a man's thinking or his writing."
- Isaac Bashevis Singer
(Related: Man, Originality, Thinking, Words, Writing)
"Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself."
- James Stephens
(Related: Originality, Saying)
"Originality implies being bold enough to go beyond accepted norms."
- Anthony Storr
(Related: Being, Originality)
"I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people and I didn't realize that there is something called originality and your own voice."
- Amy Tan
(Related: Thought, People, Originality, Voice)
"Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another."
- Voltaire
(Related: Imitation, Nothing, Originality, Writers)
"True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision."
- Edith Wharton
(Related: Vision, Originality)
"Originality is, for me, the most important quality in a script."
- Douglas Wood
(Related: Quality, Originality)