393 Quotes About Originality

When the crowed is headed in the wrong direction, walk alone.

The world is starving for original and decisive leadership.

An educated person's ideas of Art are drwan naturally from what Art has been, whereas the new work of art is beautiful by being what Art has never been; and to measure it by the standard of the past is to measure it by a standard on the rejection of which its real perfection depends.

The most original thing you possess in your life is your true self.

Our lack of originality is something we usefully forget as we hunch over our—to us—ever-fascinating lives. My friend M., leaving his wife for a younger woman, used to complain, “People tell me it’s a cliché. But it doesn’t feel like a cliché to me.” Yet it was, and is. As all our lives would prove, if we could see them from a greater distance—from the viewpoint, say, of that higher creature imagined by Einstein.

In French printer's jargon, cliche (which mimicked the sound of a mold striking molten metal) was a synonym for stereotype, which in turn evolved from the Greek for "solid impression." A stereotype was a printing plate that duplicated typography and that was used by the printer in lieu of the original. So a cliche is a word or phrase used over and over again in lieu of the original.

It is imperative you stay in touch with your inner self so you don’t lose the essence of who you truly are.

There can be no progress, if there is no original thinking. And there can be no original thinking, if you stick strictly to the known.

It's okay to write a cliché in a first draft; it sets a marker that you can get far, far away from in the rewrites.