Quotes about being original

I know... it seems like an oxymoron doesn't it? You want to be original, I want you to be original; but here I am, giving you quotes on being original!

Well bubba, as long as you cite your source (the author, not my site) you WILL be original! Don't fool people and you will go a long way grasshopper!

Plus, some of these quotes may also serve to inspire you on your quest for the perfect profile. William Ralph Inge once said, "What is originality? Undetected plagiarism." ... but then again, William did not have access to the World Wide Web. Plagiarism does not go undetected forever these days.

If all pulled in one direction, the world would keel over.
--Yiddish proverb

The man who never makes a mistake always takes orders from one who does.
No man or woman who tries to pursue an ideal in his or her own way is without enemies.
--Daisy Bates (1863-1951)

Do just once what others say you can't do, and you will never pay attention to their limitations again.
--James R. Cook

If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
--Anatole France [Jacques Anatole Thibault] (1844-1924)

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
--Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)

When all think alike, no one is thinking very much.
--Walter Lippmann (1889-1974)

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
--Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.
--Mark Twain [Samuel Clemens] (1835-1910)

There is only one success: to be able to spend your life in your own way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it.
--Christopher Darlington Morley (1890-1957)

Don't be a blueprint. Be an original.
--Roy Acuff (1903 - 1992)

A lotta cats copy the Mona Lisa, but people still line up to see the original.
--Louis Armstrong (1900 - 1971)

It is said that everyone is born an original and dies a copy.
--Myron Augsburger

Genius . . . arises in the natural, aboriginal concern for the conscious unity of all phenomena.
--Mary Austin (1868 - 1934) US writer, suffragist
"Earth Horizon," 1932.

Originality is the essence of true scholarship. Creativity is the soul of the true scholar.
--Nnamdi Azikiwe

Pretension almost always overdoes the original, and hence exposes itself.
--Hosea Ballou (1771 - 1852) US clergyman

Be yourself. The world worships the original.
--Ingrid Bergman (1915 - 1982)

GENEROUS, adj. Originally this word meant noble by birth and was rightly applied to a great multitude of persons. It now means noble by nature and is taking a bit of a rest.
--Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914)
The Devil's Dictionary, 1911.

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.
--Josh Billings (1818 - 1885) US writer

A sense of curiosity is nature's original school of education.
--Smiley Blanton

Imitation, if noble and general, insures the best hope of originality.
--Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton (1803 - 1873) English statesman, poet

Less than fifteen per cent of the people do any original thinking on any subject . . . The greatest torture in the world for most people is to think.
--Luther Burbank (1849 - 1926) US naturalist, plant breeder

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.
--Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881) Scottish essayist, historian

The human mind prefers to be spoon-fed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself - and such thinking, remember, is original thinking and may have valuable results.
--Agatha Christie (1890 - 1976) English author, dramatist
"The Moving Finger," 1942.

The most original thing a writer can do is write like himself. It is also his most difficult task.
--Robertson Davies (1913 - 1995)

When we discover that the truth is already in us, we are all at once our original selves.
--Dogen (1200 - 1253) Japanese religious leader

I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.
--Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 - 1930) Scottish author, physician
Sherlock Holmes in "A Study in Scarlet," ch. 2, 1887.

A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering.
--Freeman Dyson (1923 -) English physicist, educator
"Disturbing the Universe," pt. 1, ch. 10, 1979.

Keep on the lookout for novel ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you're working on.
--Thomas Edison (1847 - 1931) US inventor
In "A Kick in the Seat of the Pants," by Roger von Oech, 1986.

We sometimes meet an original gentleman, who, if manners had not existed, would have invented them.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

If they haven't heard it before, it's original.
--Gene Fowler (1890 - 1960) US journalist, biographer

Originality is something that is easily exaggerated, especially by authors contemplating their own work.
--John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 -) US economist, diplomat, author

The most original of authors are not so because they advance what is new, but more because they know how to say something, as if it had never been said before.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832) German poet, dramatist

Every human being on this earth is born with a tragedy, and it isn't original sin. He was born with the tragedy that he has to grow up. A lot of people don't have the courage to do it.
--Helen Hayes (1900 - 1993) US actress

Don't worry about your originality. You couldn't get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do.
--Robert Henri (1865 - 1929) US painter

Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes.
--Thomas W. Higginson (1823 - 1911) US clergyman, author

The invention of IQ did a great disservice to creativity in education . . . . Individuality, personality, originality, are too precious to be meddled with by amateur psychiatrists whose patterns for a "wholesome personality" are inevitably their own.
--Joel Hildebrand

Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841 - 1935)

I have a theory that the only original things we ever do are mistakes.
--Billy Joel (1949 -)

Originality is the art of concealing your source.
--Franklin P. Jones (1887 - 1929) US businessman
In "Quote Magazine."

Many have original minds who do not think it -- they are led away by custom.
--John Keats (1795 - 1821) English poet

The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.
--Arthur Koestler (1905 - 1983) Hungarian-English novelist, essayist

A gesture cannot be regarded as the expression of an individual, as his creation (because no individual is capable of creating a fully original gesture, belonging to nobody else), nor can it even be regarded as that person's instrument . . .
--Milan Kundera (1929 -) Czech novelist, playwright, poet
Immortality, pt. 1, ch. 2 (1991).

The only good imitations are those that poke fun at bad originals.
--Francois LaRochefoucauld (1613 - 1680) French author

Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met.
--Fran Lebowitz (1950 -) US journalist
"Social Studies," "People," 1981.

Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together.
--G. C. Lichtenberg (1742 - 1799) German physicist, writer

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

Nothing else so destroys the power to stand alone as the habit of leaning upon others. If you lean, you will never be strong or original. Stand alone or bury your ambition to be somebody in the world.
--Orison Swett Marden (1906 - 1975) US lawyer

While an original is always hard to find, he is easy to recognize.
--John L. Mason (1906 - 1975) US lawyer
"An Enemy Called Average."

If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself. Also, you will have betrayed your community in failing to make your contribution.
--Rollo May (1909 - 1994) US psychoanalyst
"The Courage to Create," 1975.

It is better to be good than to be original.
--Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886 - 1969) German-US architect

Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good.
--Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900) German philosopher, poet

The more intelligent one is, the more men of originality one finds. Ordinary people find no difference between men.
--Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662) French mathematician, physicist, theologian
"Penspes," 1670; no. 510 ed. by Krailsheimer, no. 7 ed. by Brunschvicg.

Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.
--Laurence J. Peter (1919 - 1990) Canadian-US educator, author

A great idea is usually original to more than one discoverer. Great ideas come when the world needs them. Great ideas surround the world's ignorance and press for admission.
--Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, US novelist

Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.
--Beatrix Potter (1866 - 1943) English author

An original is a creation motivated by desire. Any reproduction of an original is motivated be necessity. . . It is marvelous that we are the only species that creates gratuitous forms. To create is divine, to reproduce is human.
--Man Ray (1890 - 1976) US painter, sculptor, photographer
"Originals Graphic Multiples" (published in Objets de Mon Affection, 1983; repr. in Neil Baldwin, Man Ray, ch. 24, 1988).

Great innovators and original thinkers and artists attract the wrath of mediocrities as lightning rods draw the flashes.
--Theodor Reik (1888 - 1969) US psychoanalyst, author

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.
--Ned Rorem (1923 -) US composer

Originality depends only on the character of the drawing and the vision peculiar to each artist.
--Georges Seurat (1859 - 1891) French artist, painter
Spoken to Vincent van Gohg, quoted in "Seurat and the Science of Painting," by William I. Homer, 1964.

What the world calls originality is only an unaccustomed method of tickling it.
--George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950) English dramatist, critic

Originality is not seen in single words or even sentences. Originality is the sum total of a man's thinking or his writing.
--Isaac Singer (1904 - 1991) Polish-US novelist, short-story writer
New York Times Magazine, Mar. 12, 1978

Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself.
--James Stephens (1882 - 1950) Irish poet, storyteller

One essential ingredient for being an original in the day of copies is courageous vision.
--Charles Swindoll

Originality is nothing by judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.
--Voltaire (1694 - 1778) French philosopher, poet, novelist, playwright