Top 111 Originality Quotes

Words matter. These are the best Originality Quotes from famous people such as Thomas Carlyle, Charles Baudelaire, Thomas Couture, John Stuart Mill, Conan O’Brien, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerit

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.
Thomas Carlyle
Nearly all our originality comes from the stamp that time impresses upon our sensibility.
Charles Baudelaire
Knowing how to paint and to use one’s colors rightly has not any connection with originality. This originality consists in properly expressing your own impressions.
Thomas Couture
Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.
John Stuart Mill
The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality.
Conan O’Brien
The burden of originality is one that most people don’t want to accept. They’d rather sit in front of the TV and let that tell them what they’re supposed to like, what they’re supposed to buy, and what they’re supposed to laugh at.
Marilyn Manson
All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.
John Stuart Mill
Just keep thinking about the good side of ADD – the creativity and the originality it can stimulate.
David Neeleman
When you’re making anime, if you get all of your inspiration from anime… it’s going to lack originality and creativity, so I try to get my inspiration from different genres.
Shinichiro Watanabe
All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.
John Stuart Mill
Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.
Thomas Carlyle
The personality and songwriting of Holy Ghost! trumps the originality card any day.
Anthony Fantano
A great literary work can be completely, completely unpredictable. Which can sometimes make them very hard to read, but it gives them a great originality.
Yann Martel
Caesar was a man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.
George Bernard Shaw
Originality is definitely missing from EDM. There are people looking for it and exploring but I feel it’s so big now it is just getting milked. House music is losing all its melody as it becomes more about how dirty the drop is and how energetic it is. It loses touch with what music really is.
Avicii
Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself.
James Stephens
Knowledge comes from the past, so it’s safe. It is also out of date. It’s the opposite of originality… Experience is the opposite of being creative.
Paul Arden
The personality and songwriting of Holy Ghost! trumps the originality card any day.
Anthony Fantano
Originality is the essence of true scholarship. Creativity is the soul of the true scholar.
Nnamdi Azikiwe
Knowledge comes from the past, so it’s safe. It is also out of date. It’s the opposite of originality… Experience is the opposite of being creative.
Paul Arden
When I came up, it was all about originality and collective research. There is an awful lot of imitation going on now.
Steve Lacy
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.
C. S. Lewis
When I was coming up, we weren’t trying to get a hit or get paid, we were just trying to do our thing. The only thing we were really trying to do was to be recognized for our originality.
Bootsy Collins
Anytime there’s originality and comedy combined, it’s very potent for people who love comedy.
Martin Short
About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.
Josh Billings
Originality is independence, not rebellion; it is sincerity, not antagonism.
George Henry Lewes
Because of this, originality consists in returning to the origin.
Antoni Gaudi
Originality implies being bold enough to go beyond accepted norms.
Anthony Storr
I believe in originality, primarily. However, it’s important to know what there has been before to aim in that direction. Art history informs us. It informs our mind. I like to look at books, exhibitions, paintings, as a computer, subconsciously taking on information.
Philip Treacy
The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.
Thomas Carlyle
Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.
John Stuart Mill
Originality exists in every individual because each of

Originality exists in every individual because each of us differs from the others. We are all primary numbers divisible only by ourselves.
Jean Guitton
Thankfully, as much as Hollywood is interested in brands, I think people are still looking for originality and freshness.
Marc Platt
I am attracted to arguments that have a certain plausible originality to them.
Dinesh D’Souza
We shall be forced to attempt planned and directed research employing hundreds of workers for many years, and this cannot be done without risking the loss of independence and originality. This is a serious and fundamental obstacle but it may be overcome in two ways.
John Desmond Bernal
If contemporary artists sincerely seek to be original, unique, and new, they should begin by disregarding the notions of originality, individuality, and innovation: they are the cliches of our time.
Octavio Paz
Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson
The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.
Blaise Pascal
Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
W. H. Auden
Originality is the essence of true scholarship. Creativity is the soul of the true scholar.
Nnamdi Azikiwe
I love romantic comedies. I like to watch them and I like to be in them. It’s something that’s increasingly difficult to find that spark of originality that makes if different than the ones that come before.
Julia Roberts
The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.
Arthur Koestler
The burden of originality is one that most people don’t want to accept. They’d rather sit in front of the TV and let that tell them what they’re supposed to like, what they’re supposed to buy, and what they’re supposed to laugh at.
Marilyn Manson
Music has lost the stamp of originality.
Kumar Sanu
I don’t think I’ve ever made a claim to startling originality.
James Murphy
Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.
Voltaire
I think it’s a great document of John Stevens’ originality. At that time he was already much more fully formed in his conception than I was. I was sort of struggling to keep up, and sometimes it’s pretty obvious.
Evan Parker
Originality implies being bold enough to go beyond accepted norms.
Anthony Storr
The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality.
Conan O’Brien
I always try to improve, to find new ways of expressing myself, to keep looking for truth and originality.
Burt Lancaster
I respond to authenticity and originality, and I’ve been a fan of Don Winslow’s ever since ‘The Power Of The Dog.’
Chuck Hogan
Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet’s job. The rest is literature.
Jean Cocteau
Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.
Beatrix Potter
It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
Herman Melville
James Corden is a rare entertainment force who combines irresistible charm, warmth, and originality with a diverse range of creative instincts and performance talent.
Nina Tassler
I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.
Steve Martin
I’m someone who speaks my mind, so it was important to me that my publisher value originality and creative expression.
Ava Max
Great success in examinations does naturally not as a rule go with originality of thought.
Edward Carpenter
For the individual and for society, the more diversity you have in a field means more ways of solving a problem as well as more creativity and originality.
Eileen Pollack
I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.
Steve Martin
I think originality is something that’s important and catches people’s eye.
Ella Mai
Most people think an artist tries to be original, but originality is the last thing that develops in the artist.
Lukas Foss
I have always loved originality.

I have always loved originality.
Ankit Tiwari
Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself.
James Stephens
The difference between eccentricity and originality in historical studies is often difficult to detect at first encounter. When a radically new interpretation of a large segment of history makes its appearance, time is needed to sift the evidence.
Edmund Morgan
As a young artist, especially in rap and at that time that I came out, originality was big.
Rakim
Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Young men and young women, full of courage, originality, and genius, are everywhere to be met with.
Frank Crowninshield
Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.
Beatrix Potter
The British feel of blues has been hard, rather than emotional. Far too much emphasis on 12 bar, too little attention to words, far too little originality.
Alexis Korner