#originality

"In order to share one's true brilliance one initially has to risk looking like a fool: genius is like a wheel that spins so fast, it at first glance appears to be sitting still."

"Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent."

"One does not have to be a philosopher to be a successful artist, but he does have to be an artist to be a successful philosopher. His nature is to view the world in an unpredictable albeit useful light."

"An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate."

"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal."

"Get off the treadmill of consumption, replication, and mediocrity. Begin lifting the weights of creativity, originality, and success."

"Solitude is the soil in which genius is planted, creativity grows, and legends bloom; faith in oneself is the rain that cultivates a hero to endure the storm, and bare the genesis of a new world, a new forest."

"Our novice runs the risk of failure without additional traits: a strong inclination toward originality, a taste for research, and a desire to experience the incomparable gratification associated with the act of discovery itself."

"Create with the heart; build with the mind."

"All novels are sequels; influence is bliss."

"Anymore, no one's mind is their own."

"You can't be a rebel without the scars that come with it. Truth is, some days scars are just as ugly as they are beautiful."

"I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand,that Joplin had the last drunken throat,that Morrison had the last enlightened mind."

"originality and a feeling of one's own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle."

"Every man has a specific skill, whether it is discovered or not, that more readily and naturally comes to him than it would to another, and his own should be sought and polished. He excels best in his niche - originality loses its authenticity in one's efforts to obtain originality."

"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos."

"Because even among contrarians, I’m a contrarian. But all of this is just words of bronze, third place rhetoric. What do I really mean when I say we want to shock society into awareness? Do we mean we want more originality and individuality? Less TV, more reading, writing, actual thinking? Less sheep, more shepherd pie? Yes, yes, and a little more pie, please. Oh, and some more sweet tea, too"

"An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them."

"Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known."

"Animals do it largely for the REPRODUCTION, but so-called Social Animals (People) do it regularly thinking that it will give them SATISFACTION."