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When you think up new ideas, they may be new for you, but have others
been there before? Being the first can be scary and it can be
exhilarating. Like Hilary on Everest, we do it because it is there and
because the very first view from the top is incomparable.
See also
art, being creative, being different*,
copying*, deviation, discovery,
imagination, invention, science, thinking, wonder
Quotes
‘Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape
destinies and societies; but the compelling force of all times has been the
force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the roots of human
spirit.’
— Ansel Adams
‘Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe
— you
can’t take a taxi.’
— Alan Alda
‘I am a choreographer. A choreographer is a poet. I do not create. God
creates. I assemble, and I will steal from everywhere to do it.’
— George Balanchine
‘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
‘The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.’
— Thomas Carlyle
‘If there’s an original thought out there, I could use one right now.’
— Bob Dylan
‘Make it a point to keep a lookout for novel and interesting ideas that
others have used successfully. Your idea has to be
original only in its
adaptation to the problem you are currently working on.’
— Thomas Alva Edison
‘Sometimes you have to be worn out and burnt out to become authentic and
original.’
— Michael Eisner
‘Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be
violent and original in your work.’
— Gustav Flaubert
‘If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve
always got.’
— Ed Foreman
‘In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have
merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters.’
— Paul Gauguin
‘Into the same river you could not step twice, for other waters
are flowing.’
— Heraclitus
‘Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate
but in what we do with that which we borrow from others.’
— Eric Hoffer
‘Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate
but in what we do with that which we borrow from others.’
— Eric Hoffer
‘What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.’
— William Ralph Inge
‘Many have original minds who do not think it—they are led away by custom.
Man may, like the spider, spin from his own inwards his own airy Citadel.’
— John Keats
‘The principal mark of genius is not perfection but
originality, the opening
of new frontiers.’
— Arthur Koestler
‘The more original a discovery the more obvious it seems afterwards.’
— Arthur Koestler
‘Creativity is the defeat of habit by imposing
originality and change.’
— Andy Law
‘It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.’
— Herman Melville
‘All good things that exist are the fruits of originality.’
— John Stuart Mill
‘Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too
good.’
— Friedrich Nietzsche
‘The majority of business men are not capable of an
original thought, simply
because they cannot escape the tyranny of reason.’
— David Ogilvy
‘Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of
the originality.’
— Beatrix Potter
‘That was the very centre of his genius – he invented things that anyone
could have thought of, and men who can invent things that anyone could have
thought of are very rare men.’
— Terry Pratchett
‘In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that nobody else
has thought of.’
— Robert Schumann
‘It is necessary to any originality to have the courage to be an amateur.’
— Wallace Stevens
‘Nothing has yet been said that’s not been said before.’
— Publius Terence
‘Originality is nothing by judicious
imitation. The most original writers
borrowed one from another.’
— Voltaire
‘Originality is simply a fresh pair of eyes.’
— Woodrow Wilson
‘Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original,
must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.’
— William Wordsworth
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