Be Original Quotes

In order to be creative, you don't have to be original. ~ Ray Bradbury

Be Original. Follow your dreams. The worst possible thing for you to do in life is give up what makes you happy. ~ Love The Stacks Bookstore

..:Sometimes when cooking, I haven't had all the ingredients required to fulfill the recipe which I might be working on at the time. But one thing I have learned is that, without them, we can learn to improvise. And most of the time, by improvising, some chefs have created the greatest plates ever. Regardless what you might be going through right now in your life, learn to improvise and make the best with what you now have. Add your own taste and style to all you do. Follow the recipes if you can, but do be original. Put your own signature to things:.. ~ Rafael Garcia

Tradition kills originality; you keep repeating the same things in tradition! Behave like the sky; always create new and different things; be original! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

I try to be original in every piece of music I do, and of course I probably fail every time. ~ Herbert

I wrote lots of scripts that never got made and they were terrible. I thought they were good at the time. You can't write two scripts and expect your career to take off. Keep writing. Be you. Be original. A lot of people go for a genre, which is fine if you can do that really well, but we all have such layered histories. We all come from a unique background. Write about your past, write about you. Or make stuff up, but make it about something that really matters. ~ Nicole Holofcener

We've all forgotten how to be original. ~ Peter Jackson

Your art not only doesn't have to be original, in other words; it also doesn't have to be important. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

The struggle to be original hates conformity, but the struggle to be better disregards it, or takes advantage of it to build workable conventions. ~ Walter Darby Bannard

What do you think of when you think of mourning?' Jenny asks.
The question snaps me back to attention. I answer without really thinking. "I guess 'Funeral Blues' by W.H. Auden. I think it was Auden. I suppose that's not very original.'
'I don't know it.'
'It's a poem.'
'I gathered.'
'I'm just clarifying. It's not a blues album.'
Jenny ignores my swipe at her intelligence.
'Does your response need to be original? Isn't that what poetry is for, for the poet to express something so personal that it ultimately is universal?'
I shrug. Who is Jenny, even new Jenny, to say what poetry is for? Who am I for that matter?
'Why do you thin of that poem in particular?'
"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, / Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, / Silence the pianos and with muffled drum / Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.'
I learned the poem in college and it stuck. ~ Steven Rowley

It is better to be good than to be original, ~ Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

No man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the work's sake, and what men call originality will come unsought.. ~ C.S. Lewis

Where I come from, you had to be original. You had to come up with your own little moves. It doesn't matter if it's a big move. It had to be a dope original concept. ~ Roxrite

A pink rose among a thousand white daisies stand out; be likewise. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

To an omniscient being, nothing in all of Creation can be original, fashionable, or even distinct, as every event, thought, action, adventure and discovery is occurring simultaneously in one stretched-out moment. To be omniscient means to have never felt even the slightest twang of curiosity, for there can be no unexpected twists if every outcome to every drama and experiment is already known. Without the capacity for curiosity it is, therefore, impossible for the omniscient being to be interested in anything, let alone be attentive to His own pleasure, as pleasure is inaccessible if all of Creation is, from His great perspective, perfectly flat and of a uniform temperature. ~ John Zande

If being original means having to throw paint in front of a jet turbine to hit a canvas 50 ft away then lets not be original. ~ Shepard Fairey

To be original one needs to learn the ideas of other painters in order to be different from them. ~ Edgar Alwin Payne

One of the characters in our story, Gavril Ardalionovitch Ivolgin, belonged to the other category; he belonged to the category of "much cleverer" people; though head to toe he was infected with the desire to be original. But this class of person, as we have observed above, is far less happy than the first. The difficulty is that the intelligent "ordinary" man, even if he does imagine himself at times (and perhaps all his life) a person of genius and originality, nevertheless retains within his heart a little worm of doubt, which sometimes leads the intelligent man in the end to absolute despair. If he does yield in this belief, he is still completely poisoned with inward-driven vanity. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Be original; don't be scared of being bold! ~ Ed Sheeran

It's easier to be original and foolish than original and wise. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

Give up on trying to be original. Every song has been sung, every picture has been painted, and every story has been told. The best one can do is sing, draw, or tell it again well. ~ Evan Mandery

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

There is a crucial distinction to be made between innovation and originality. The second, unlike the first, can never break with what preceded it: to be original, an artist must also belong to the tradition from which he departs. To put it another way, he must violate the expectations of his audience, but he must also, in countless ways, uphold and endorse them. ~ Roger Scruton

Hesitancy is the surest destroyer of talent. One cannot be timorous and reticent, one must be original and loud. New metaphors, new rhythms, new expressions of emotion can only spring from unhindered gall. Nothing should interfere with that intuition
not the fear of appearing stupid, nor of offending somebody, nor jeopardizing publication, nor being trivial. The intuition must be as unhindered as a karate chop. ~ Stephen Dobyns

Don't try to be original; just try to be good. ~ Paul Rand

To be original, seek your inspiration from unexpected sources. ~ Paul Arden

If you can just be yourself, then you have to be original because there's no one like you. ~ Marc Newson

I love the idea of a tiny window between the back stoop and the pantry, where the milkman would pass through the cheese. But of course, there is no milkman anymore. So somebody coming by the house and seeing the window would say, 'Oh, that must be original, because that's where the milkman passed the cheese through to the pantry.' ~ Chris Van Allsburg

It is not possible to be original by trying to be original - those who attempt this in the arts will be merely avant-garde. Originality is the product of an impulse to intense and overwhelming that it bursts the conventions and produces something new - again more by accident than design. ~ Michael Foley

Be original. That's my best advice. You're going to find that there's something that you do well, and try to do it with as much originality as you can, and don't skimp on the words. Work on the words. ~ Bob Seger

You have to be original. The people creating a buzz on YouTube are taking risks, and they're doing something different. I like it when 15 year-olds come on and tell me what to do rather than the other way around. ~ Simon Cowell

I wasn't intentionally trying to create my own path or be original, it was just I needed to say certain things and I needed to express myself, and that's how it came out. ~ Emeli Sande

In a world led with a herd mentality,
it takes immense courage, resolve and sacrifice
to maintain the purity of your form.
You have to be at peace with being misunderstood.
You have to be at peace with walking alone.
You have to be at peace with being judged.
In the end just remember,
"If the world is an array of art,
You are the Masterpiece ~ Henna Sohail

Even when I was a hip-hop DJ I always kept it classy. The motto is always 'flashy but classy.' You've got to be original and stand out from the crowd and take some chances. But you've always got to keep it classy. ~ Mayer Hawthorne

I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original. ~ Philip Johnson

I just wanted to play tennis. I started because I wanted to pick up another sport and then as I was slowly getting better I wanted to see how far I can go but I always wanted to be myself. I wanted to be original. I didn't want to copy anybody's style. ~ Jana Novotna

If an artist wants to be original, he should not look to art for inspiration, for art seeks its model in life, not art - and only life is rich enough to simulate originality. ~ Anthony Marais

Good fiction is about asserting the beauties of the world, inventing a new, positive thing. Where am I going to get that? And it should be original; it should not be cliched. So the way I looked at history was not to accuse it of failure. ~ Orhan Pamuk

I have been in the music industry ever since I was six years old. I have been inspired by so many great artists and of course trying to be original at the same time. I try not to work under boundaries while I'm making music. ~ Asher Monroe

Admiring doesn't make you exactly like what you admire, admire yourself and you will be original and exactly how you wish and feel to be. ~ Auliq Ice

A sound theory of value demands something different. It demands that good should be original and evil a mere perversion; that good should be the tree and evil the ivy; that good should be able to see all round evil (as when sane men understand lunacy) while evil cannot retaliate in kind; that good should be able to exist on its own while evil requires the good on which it is parasitic in order to continue its parasitic existence. ~ C.S. Lewis

To be young means to be original, to have remained nearer to the sources of life: it means to be able to stand up and shake off the fetters of an outlived civilization, to dare
where others lack the courage
to plunge again into the elemental. ~ Thomas Mann

Because ideas have to be original only with regard to their adaptation to the problem at hand, I am always extremely interested in how others have used used them ... ~ Thomas A. Edison

-Climb out of mediocrity, it has no integrity. Climb out of imitation it is a limitation. Climb higher than copying, it is double standard. Come up to be original ~ Ikechukwu Joseph

[To Oleg Cassini:] Just make sure no one has exactly the same dress I do ... I want all of mine to be original & no fat little woman hopping around in the same dress. ~ Jackie Kennedy

I remember once, I read in a horoscope, because I'm an Aries, I read this terrible thing, which really affected me, which said, "You will never be original. You will always be an interpreter." (Laughs) I thought, "Oh my God." You know, I had to live with that on my back for [all my life]. ~ Andy Serkis

I don't care what you're playing. You can be playing EDM music. Well, guess what? That came out in the early '80s. There's no way to be original. All you can do is put yourself into it and do the best you can. ~ Brittany Howard

It's clear that you want to seem original. But is it possible that you - ?" "It is clear," interrupted I-330, "that to be original means to stand out among others; consequently, to be original means to violate the law of equality. What was called in the language of the ancients 'to be common' is with us only the fulfilling of one's duty. For - ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

Insist upon yourself.
Be original. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

You will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. 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 ... Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. ~ C.S. Lewis

It pays to be original. ~ Anthony T. Hincks

To be a classic, a novel should be original. ~ Ruth Rendell

Why did you decide to join me?"

"Why … ?" repeated Redhead, needing time to think.

"Word of three letters," said Lymond. "Come along, for God's sake: no need to let me have it all my own way. What was it? Rape, incest, theft, treason, arson, wetting the bed at night …"

"… Or burning my mother alive," said the other sarcastically.

"Oh, be original at least. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

In stand-up it really helps to play yourself and talk about your own feelings. You cannot fail to be original if you're just talking about what you think about X, Y and Z. Unless you've got a twin brother who's also a stand-up. ~ Eddie Izzard

All errors are just ordinary, what extraordinary sin can you commit? All the sins have been committed already. You cannot find a new sin - it is very difficult, it is almost impossible to be original about sin. For millions of years people have committed everything that can be committed.
To be thrown in hell for your sins. Now this is too much! you can throw a man into hell for five years, ten years, twenty years, fifty years. If a man has lived for seventy years you can throw him there for seventy years.and that is if you only believe in one life. It is good that they believe in one life. ~ Osho

Be original and find your inner voice. The rest will follow. ~ A.R. Rahman

He did not want to be original; he made superhuman efforts to be like everybody else: but there is no escaping one's destiny. ~ Lev Shestov

Most people think an artist tries to be original, but originality is the last thing that develops in the artist. ~ Lukas Foss

Very few people are original. There's very little original anything out there. Because to be original means you have to stand alone. ~ Susan Powter

To be original is not creating your own idea; it's the essence of the idea in the reader's mind. ~ Kaela Marooney

I don't care for remakes. There's soooo much undiscovered material out there; old and new. I want to be original. ~ Tishuan Scott

At our theaters we only see feeble copies of the copies that have proceeded them, renounce that slavish routine which keeps your art in its infancy; examine everything relative to the development of talents; be original; form a style for yourselves based on your private studies; if you must copy, imitate nature, it is a noble model and never misleads those who follow it. ~ Jean-Georges Noverre

You got to have style, and learn to be original. ~ KRS-One

Seeing the world anew, as if it were new, is as old as writing. It's what all painters are trying to do, to see what's there, to see it in a way that renews it. It becomes more and more urgent as the planet gets worn flat and forest after forest is slain to print the paper for people's impressions to be scrawled down on. It becomes harder and harder to be original, to see things with an innocent eye. Innocence is much tied up with it. As the planet gets progressively less innocent, you need a more innocent eye to see it. ~ Martin Amis

No book can truly be original, but there are always way to make it unique. ~ Hiba Fatima Ahmad

Be original. That's all that matters........Take inspiration from others, but always make something new. ~ Tomas Lindberg

Be different. Be original. Nobody will remember a specific flower in a garden filled with thousands of the same yellow flower, BUT they will remember the one that managed to change its color to purple. ~ Suzy Kassem

I've always felt that really good prequels should be original movies. ~ Damon Lindelof

Curious that it is impossible for a man to be original without attracting around him a set of unoriginal minds, as though he were a honey-pot and they the flies! ~ Marie Corelli

By definition a sequel can't be original. So you've got to figure out what worked the first time around. ~ Barry Sonnenfeld

The best way to be original is to not copy anyone. ~ Sebastyne Young

An idea you have might not be original. But by creating a novel out of that idea you can make it original. ~ Umberto Eco

You do not have to feel truer than others in order to be original.
You just need to be different and keep aspiring to be a better you. ~ Toba Beta

It needs time, perspective, to show you that someone might be original. ~ Jill Dawson

The elderly have weathered enough squalls to know that this one, too, shall pass. They own the courage to be original; they've learned to hold their own values above the conventional wisdom. ~ Sarah Ferguson

If you wish women to love you be original; I know a man who used to wear felt boots summer and winter & women fell in love with him. ~ Anton Chekhov

The only excuse a man has for writing is that he express himself, that he reveal to others the kind of world reflected in the mirror of his soul; his only excuse is that he be original. ~ Remy De Gourmont

After some time passed in studying - and even imitating - the works of others, I would recommend the student to endeavour to be original, and to remember that originality should not be undiscovered plagiarism. ~ Henry Peach Robinson

Originality is so hip and cool, but to be original you must dare to be corny. ~ Bradford Winters

Do whatever you please, follow your own star; be original if you want to be and don't if you don't want to be. Just be natural and gay and light-hearted and pretty and simple and overflowing and general and baroque and bare and austere and stylised and wild and daring and conservative, and learn and learn and learn. Open your mind to every form of beauty. ~ Constance Spry

You've gotta be original, because if you're like someone else, what do they need you for? ~ Bernadette Peters

Have you ever been to Florence?" asked Dr. Igor.
"No."
"You should go there; it's not far, for that is where you will find my second example. In the cathedral in Florence, there's a beautiful clock designed by Paolo Uccello in 1443. Now, the curious thing about this clock is that, although it keeps time like all other clocks, its hands go in the opposite direction to that of normal clocks."
"What's that got to do with my illness?"
"I'm just coming to that. When he made this clock, Paolo Uccello was not trying to be original: The fact is that, at the time, there were clocks like his as well as others with hands that went in the direction we're familiar with now. For some unknown reason, perhaps because the duke had a clock with hands that went in the direction we now think of as the "right" direction, that became the only direction, and Uccello's clock then seemed an aberration, a madness."
Dr. Igor paused, but he knew that Mari was following his reasoning.
"So, let's turn to your illness: Each human being is unique, each with their own qualities, instincts, forms of pleasure, and desire for adventure. However, society always imposes on us a collective way of behaving, and people never stop to wonder why they should behave like that. They just accept it, the way typists accepted the fact that the QWERTY keyboard was the best possible one. Have you ever met anyone in your entire life who asked why the hands of a clock should go in one particu ~ Paulo Coelho

If you're doing something like 'Arcadia' by Tom Stoppard, which has been done millions and millions of times, and it's been played some unbelievably well-respected actors, there's a lot more pressure there. But I try not to think about all the other people who have done it before me. You've got to try and be original. ~ Bel Powley

Having a sense of security in one realm gives us the freedom to be original in another. By ~ Adam M. Grant

My advice to female directors is not to wait until you feel like your ideas have been pre-certified or until you think you've gotten some approval for them. Then it's too late! Follow your gut. That's hard to do, but the only way to be original. ~ Abigail Disney

To be original is to discover the commonplace of a thousand years
to face at first the sneer that no one would have thought of it, and at last the indifference because any one would. ~ Gerald Stanley Lee

It is not possible to be original except on a basis of tradition. ~ D.W. Winnicott

For someone who is starting out on developing their critical skills, just being aware of its existence is great: it can make the difference between trying to write a story around a cliche or an original idea, and better still, studying it can eventually clue you in on how to breathe new life into tired tropes. ~ Charles Stross

Re-writing is different from writing. Original writing is very difficult. ~ David Cronenberg

His foreparents came to America in immigrant ships. My foreparents came to America in slave ships. But whatever the original ships, we are both in the same boat tonight. ~ Jesse Jackson

Secrets are only secrets to those who can't see. There are many people who got 20-20 vision and can't see a secret right in front of them. ~ Linda Armstrong

The symbol-producing function of our dreams is an attempt to bring our original mind back to consciousness, where it has never been before, and where it has never undergone critical self-reflection. We have been that mind, but we have never known it. ~ C. G. Jung

I wrote the original Mike Hammer as a comic, Mike Danger. ~ Mickey Spillane

There is a celebrated aphorism insisting that the best way to live is to 'work like you don't need the money, dance like nobody is watching, and love like you've never been hurt.' ... After years of hearing and reading these lines I have decided to tell the truth: the original version is wrong. There is a grave error in the wording of this adage. The correct version should go as follows:
Love like you don't need the money,
Work like nobody is watching,
Dance like you've never been hurt.
See? Doesn't that make more sense? ~ Gina Barreca

1. Mein Kampf does not contain the word "Nazi."
2. Mein Kampf does not contain the term "Third Reich."
3. Mein Kampf does not contain the word "Fascist" ever as a self reference by Hitler.
4. Mein Kampf does not contain a single use of the word "swastika."
5. Nazis did not call their symbol a "swastika."
6. Swastikas represented crossed "S" letters for "SOCIALISTS" under Adolf Hitler.
7. Nazi salutes and Nazi behavior originated from the USA's Pledge of Allegiance to the flag.
8. The Nazi salute came from the military salute (as used in the original Pledge of Allegiance in the USA).
I learned the above revelations and more from the the historian Dr. Rex Curry's scholarly discoveries. ~ Micky Barnetti

He had his one life. In June 1942 he went to Lazarevo holding it in his hands. By the shores of the Kama, he found her gorgeous and restored, and not just restored to her original shining brilliance but enlarged and clarified. Light reflected off her, no matter which way she turned. They ran down to the almighty river. She never even looked back. She would never know what it meant to him, an unremitting sinner, after all the unsacred things he had seen and done, to have her innocence. He held her to him. He had dreamed of it too long, touching her. Dreamed of seeing her naked too long, beautiful, bare, ready for him. He was afraid to hurt her. He had never been with an untouched girl before; he wasn't sure if he was supposed to do something first. In the end, he did nothing first, but she baptized him with her body. There was no Alexander anymore; the man he knew had died and was reborn inside a perfect heart, given to him straight from God, to him and for him. ~ Paullina Simons

Earth is the material with the most potential because it is the original source material. ~ Michael Heizer

I never stopped writing music, I just stopped writing songs. I've been writing music continually ever since the last album of original tunes, "River Of Dreams" in '93. ~ Billy Joel

Graham was not only the original quantitative analyst, to whom today's whole school of such thinking owes its heritage, but he was also a source of much of the fundamental analysis and lore that Wall Streeters follow today. ~ Kenneth L. Fisher

The process of recovering from addictiveness happens at a deeper level of consciousness and through feeling our pain without using old addictive fixes. There is no escaping that getting in touch with our original pain is the touchstone to mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. ~ Christopher Dines