Originality Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old originality quotes, originality sayings, and originality proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers. Arthur Koestler
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest. Eric Hoffer
Originality finds the unexpected but inevitable next step. Mason Cooley
Originality consists in thinking for yourself, and not in thinking unlike other people. Sir James Fitzjames Stephen
Originality consists not only in doing things differently, but also in "doing things better." Edward Stedman
People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us, and this goes on to the end. What can we call our own except energy, strength, and will? If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, there would be but a small balance in my favour. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If you have an original idea use it carefully so you won't look like you've just put on a new suit. Jean Cocteau
All good things which exist are the fruits of originality. John Stuart Mill
Originality is undetected plagiarism. Dean Inge
Originality is a thing we constantly clamor for, and constantly quarrel with. Thomas Carlyle
Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe. You can't take a taxi. Alan Alda
The truth is that the propensity of man to imitate what is before him is one of the strongest parts of his nature. Walter Bagehot
Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert intergrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary. Cecil Beaton
Let's have some new clichés. Sam Goldwyn
Posterity weaves no garlands for the actor. Friedrich von Schiller
Nothing has yet been said that's not been said before. Terence
What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before. Mark Twain
It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else. Henri Matisse
Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not possibly have met. Fran Lebowitz
What is originality? To see something that has no name as yet and hence cannot be mentioned although it stares us all in the face. The way men usually are, it takes a name to make something visible for them. Those with originality have for the most part also assigned names. Friedrich Nietzsche
Make it a practice to keep on the 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 working on. Thomas Edison
One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves. George Eliot
A well cultivated mind is, so to speak, made up of all the minds of preceding ages; it is only one single mind which has been educate during all this time. Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
The merit of originality is not novelty, it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man; he believes for himself, not for another. Thomas Carlyle
Every human being is intended to have a character of his own; to be what no other is, and to do what no other can do. William Ellery Channing
No one ever made a difference by being like everyone else. P. T. Barnum
I could never understand the herd mentality. I have always fought to do things my way and have stuck to that. Tabu
Originality brings more bumps in the road, yet it leaves us with more happiness and a greater sense of meaning. Adam Grant
We all have a certain duality / A self that is us and one virtuality / Self question your originality / Material-ity creates artificiality / Multiple personality is what you start to see / Which one is me and who only I aspire to be / As different as they seem it's merely ocean and sea / Your dreams have formed this self appointee. Abaculus