Top 115 Imitate Quotes

Acting as a profession came to me by chance: in 1946, after the war, I was having lunch with my cousin, who was the Italian ambassador, and he asked, ‘What are you going to do now you’re out of uniform?’ I said, ‘I’m pretty inventive, and I can imitate people,’ and he said, ‘Have you thought about being an actor?’

Art does imitate life, it has to come from somewhere. To put boundaries and limitations on it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

‘American Idol’ is sometimes lumped with reality shows and it has that element – folks-next-door battling it out in a contest. But instead of fighting leeches, bugs, parasites and each other, as on CBS’s ‘Survivor’ and other shows that imitate it, the ‘American Idol’ contestants, of course, sing.

It’s not that I imitate him. I use a lot of what I feel. Even now, they refuse for me to stop doing James Brown. If it’s something I can feel from the heart and from the soul, I do it.

I’m hard to imitate because I’m not gifted enough.

Don’t imitate. Write what you know about, that has to be your goal.

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

When violence is real and you flinch away from it, violence does not push people to try and imitate that. Often, we shun the violence that makes us flinch, because it disturbs us. And what makes us uncomfortable and disturbs us is not often bad. What disturbs us will not make us imitate that.

I got this Christmas gift with the entire Beatles catalog. I had fun trying to duplicate what I was hearing on these records, only using the instruments I had at hand – an acoustic guitar, and that’s all. It was endlessly amusing to me to try to imitate John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s harmonies using the guitar.

I could tell you which writer’s rhythms I am imitating. It’s not exactly plagiarism, it’s falling in love with good language and trying to imitate it.

When I’m composing a scene for the first time, I try to imitate my character. The less critical distance the better – particularly when they’re acting badly.

For Zidane to say he’s impressed – well, that’s the greatest compliment! He was my role model, I just loved to see him play, and I used to try and imitate his moves when I was young. I think he was by far the best footballer of his generation.

I don’t like to analyze what I do too much, but I certainly never meet a single person and say, ‘You’re the next character.’ People think that’s what I do. They also think that I sit down and observe and try to imitate random people. I’ve never done that at all.

When I came out with ‘Posse on Broadway,’ I decided, enough with trying to imitate New York, enough with trying to imitate L.A., let’s just be Seattle. And rock, grunge, followed right after ‘Posse on Broadway’ and Seattle just exploded.

The music is something outside myself that’s also inside myself… Music and a sense of another presence always went hand in hand. Even when I was three, I would improvise music, and my maternal grandfather would act as an audience and used to applaud. I would imitate things like thunder and rain.

Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.

The Russians imitate French ways, but always at a distance of fifty years.

I entreat students of letters and other scholars to obey their masters in things good, to imitate them, and diligently apply themselves to letters for the sake of God’s honour and their own salvation and that of other men.

I’ve been telling my students, ‘Imitate, imitate.’ And they say, ‘Well, what if I plagiarize, or what if I’m not original? I want to be myself.’ And I always tell them, ‘Your self will shine through’… If you allow yourself to feel deeply and honestly, what you say won’t be like anyone else.

My sisters were teenagers when I was born, so the last thing they wanted was a little nappy-headed boy running around. I would imitate them or copy things off TV.

It is only in the case of the Priestly Code that opinions differ widely; for it tries hard to imitate the costume of the Mosaic period, and, with whatever success, to disguise its own.

My style statement is to be myself! Because if you try to imitate someone else, you will end up feeling uncomfortable.

When I was a young boy, I would watch my mom apply her makeup, so one day, I took a lipstick she had and put it on my mouth, trying to imitate her. It ended up all over my face.

Our best selves tell us that ‘there but for the grace of God… ‘ and that, in the end, there is no distance, really, between us and them. It is just us. Our best and noble hope is to imitate the God we believe in. The God who has abundant room in God’s grief and heart for us all.

I began to imitate what I was reading, and I started to become a poet, even though what I was writing were not good poems.

Young players try and imitate the best players like Ronaldo. They try to imitate the hair, the clothes, the cars, the tricks. I try to tell them how hard Cristiano Ronaldo trained in training and after training. He only wanted to be the best. Everything else came after.

I think that my father would find it so confusing that people want to imitate him. Not because he didn’t have confidence in who he was, but because he never imitated anybody. He was his own person.

I was kind of an obnoxious kid. I would imitate Celine Dion. I would jump around and belt to the rafters and do the accent and everything.

Pau has a game that’s impossible to imitate. He’s so finesse and so skilled, it’s impossible to imitate. Honestly, I’m a big fan of the game. I’ve never seen a player his size who has so many moves, so many counters and it’s impossible. His length, his size, his skills – I mean, you can’t teach that.

When I did my first few television specials, my illusions were so advanced that it took a couple of years before the other illusionists could even figure out what I was doing, let alone try to imitate me.

I think Indians dress better than anyone, but I don’t want to imitate more than a detail or two; I prefer my clothes humdrum and inconspicuous, and a cowboy hat just doesn’t work for me.

Adopting mannerisms is called mimicry. That is not a good way to do things. You don’t start to imitate somebody, the way he walks and talks, that is a very irrelevant element of acting.

Children always tend to imitate everything that we are doing in front of them.

I know I idolise someone like Billie Holiday, but I don’t look at her and think I have to imitate her lifestyle, to try and sing like she did.

It is not so much the example of others we imitate as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words.

I don’t want to imitate life in movies; I want to represent it. And in that representation, you use the colors you feel, and sometimes they are fake colors. But always it’s to show one emotion.

Occasionally, especially on video games and with a lot of the fighting stuff, to get what you feel is the proper sound, you have to imitate what you’re doing, and occasionally I’ve gotten carried away and kicked over mic stands or punched things.

There is a history of gay people pretending to be straight. I want to balance the sides. I’m a straight person pretending to be gay. I’ve had a lot of people to imitate. It’s easy when you’re British; we’re camp by nature, anyway.

One of the first comic things you do is imitate.

Washington’s entire honesty of mind and his fearless look into the face of all facts are qualities which can never go out of fashion and which we should all do well to imitate.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

If you are going to be a character for the long-term you can’t just imitate, you have to bring yourself to it.

English, as a subject, never really got over its upstart nature. It tries to bulk itself up with hopeless jargon and specious complexity, tries to imitate subjects it can never be.

When I sing along with Britney Spears I will sing in an American accent. But eventually I found my own voice. My songs are so brutally honest, it would be alien to sing in any accent other than my own. Don’t get me wrong – I can imitate singers. I can do bar mitzvahs and weddings.

I like that 3D is based on the fact that you look with two eyes, so two cameras imitate that.

I was pretty young when my folks were playing those kinds of records, ’70s rock and psychedelic stuff. So I just remember those songs being synonymous with my childhood, and I was always trying to imitate them on piano.

Certainly early on, I kind of modeled myself after Steve Martin and Bill Murray. I would imitate them sometimes.

I have my own thing going on; I don’t want to imitate anyone else.

Just as the slave master required the slaves to imitate the image he had of them, so women, who live in a relatively powerless position, politically and economically, feel obliged by a kind of implicit force to live up to culture’s image of what is female.

The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.

It messed with my head a little bit when people started to imitate what I was doing.

I personally do not believe ‘Premam’ has influenced anyone in any way; it has just portrayed characters and is one man’s story where he falls in love with his teacher, and I don’t believe people would use this as a reason to imitate it.

Shatrughan Sinha’s career lasted because people could imitate his dialogues. You cannot be a mass superstar if people don’t imitate your dialogues.

If what you want to do is make good art, decide what’s good and try to imitate it.

Kings in this world should imitate God, their mercy should be above their works.

I do myself up kind of like a doll. I have a doll collection and I look at their outfits and kind of imitate them.

Lyndon Johnson is not a comfortable model for President Obama to imitate. He is an all-but-forgotten president – pilloried for the failed war in Vietnam and criticized for grandiose reforms conservatives denounce as the epitome of federal social engineering that costs too much and does too little.

It is much easier to imitate something else that you know is accepted and loved than it is to look inside and follow your own compass, because you have no idea if you’ll be accepted, if you’ll be right, if your ideas are good, if your way is a path to success.

I seek out hard things. I tried to imitate other singers. It was a self-discovery for me to move from imitating others to me growing to sing in my own voice. The opera was difficult and it felt like a personal conquest.

I think it’s funny when people, they try to imitate the ‘Chandelier’ video. I think it’s hilarious.

Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.

The biggest thing is education for young chefs and how they should focus on one cuisine rather than trying to imitate too many. It’s like art – you can see the cycles from many past artists and new artists being inspired by past artists.

It is the nurse that the child first hears, and her words that he will first attempt to imitate.

Truman Capote was a pop figure, but it wasn’t until he went on David Susskind’s show and had that extraordinary voice and manner that everyone could imitate, that he really took off as a figure.

But I think the image that’s thrown out on television is a bad image. Because you see players who want to imitate hip-hop stars. And the NBA is taking advantage of the situation.

You could not imitate Fellini. His beauty was above anything else, but that intelligence was typically Italian. This helped me to realise that I had to create something that was distinctively Japanese.

Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female – whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.

Ananya is a very happy soul, who won’t get bogged down by insecurities. I have told her to not imitate anyone.

To form our taste, we must neither depreciate nor imitate, but we should understand and originate.

There is something about the way that Greek poets, say Aeschylus, use metaphor that really attracts me. I don’t think I can imitate it, but there’s a density to it that I think I’m always trying to push towards in English.

Shah Rukh Khan is a self-made man, and he does inspire with what he does. It is foolish to think that one can try and imitate or modify what he does. I have been original in my performances so far.

One cannot possibly understand the teaching of the saints unless one has a pure mind and is trying to imitate their life.

Rest in peace, Harold Lederman. When I was younger, my brother and I used to imitate his famous ‘OK, Jim!’ line while watching the big ‘HBO Boxing’ events. What an amazing character he was, and while I never met him, he seemed to be a lovely man.

I propose not our enemies as an example for our general imitation, yet, as their navy is the best regulated of any in the world, we must, in some degree, imitate them and aim at such farther improvement as may one day make ours vie with – and exceed – theirs.

I come from the world of theater, and I know Noel Coward’s writing well. He has such a specific voice, and was one of the wittiest writers who ever lived, and you think of him in the same category as someone like Shakespeare who’s just impossible to imitate.

Because America leads the world by example, it’s no surprise that some might seek to imitate our domestic rules and regulations on a global scale.

With high-speed cameras, we can do the opposite of time lapse. We can shoot images that are thousands of times faster than our vision. And we can see how nature’s ingenious devices work, and perhaps we can even imitate them.

In New York I was taken to a restaurant where comedians gather. There were 14 who imitate me in their acts. They wanted me to give them pointers.

What happens is young girls see images of women being objectified, and the more the woman becomes an object the more followers and likes she has – they see that as a role model and try to imitate these women, but they’re not old enough to know what they’re doing.

You can’t imitate; all our faces are constructed differently… and the vocal cords; otherwise, we’d all sound alike. I don’t think anybody should ever teach by imitating.

You cannot be an educator or a teacher without relating to children with full insight. Their urge to imitate has been transformed into a receptivity based on a natural and uncontested relationship of authority, and you must take this into account in the broadest possible sense.

So it just goes to show you that it was always the Hells Angels first. They were the originals and all other clubs try and imitate what the Hells Angels have already done.

I was in the playground, like, ‘Let’s imitate the Spice Girls and form a girl group!’ I would go home and sing into my hairbrush and act like Britney Spears. I was no Mozart.

It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.

It has become an accepted tenet that kids will rarely listen to their parents but seldom fail to imitate them. Communicating the message has never been a good substitute for ‘showing up’ and embodying the message.

I learned to run backwards from Muhammad Ali. He told me about running backwards because you try to imitate everything you do in the ring, so sometimes you back up. So you have to train your legs to go backwards.

My child, you are going to be a great king; do not imitate me in the taste I have had for building, or in that I have had for war; try, on the contrary, to be at peace with your neighbors.

I had a poster of Iniesta. He seemed like a different player to me: elegant, special… a genius. I watched all the Barcelona games to see how they played and the geniuses, Iniesta and Messi. After, I tried to imitate them, but it was difficult.

Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.

Back when Jerry Seinfeld was just another comedian hanging around the clubs, I’d imitate him to amuse myself and the other comics. The club owners would say, ‘What are you doing that for? Nobody knows him.’

I did not come into contact with any Muslim before I embraced Islam. I read the Qur’an first and realized no person is perfect, Islam is perfect, and if we imitate the conduct of the Holy Prophet… we will be successful.

I don’t want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

People should try to know God and imitate him in their works. Repetitions and ceremonials are of no use.

If I am playing a historical character, I try to watch the person in newsreels and read about them, but I will not imitate them.

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

To rest satisfied with existing evils, as if we could do nothing, is not obedience; but neither is it obedience to imitate the actions of the apostles.

We didn’t know about the rest of the world. We just knew the pictures that we saw on TV, and it was so different that we wanted to try to imitate that, to a certain extent.

I feel like I was trying to imitate other people or trying to be something I wasn’t.

In college, I went to school for acting; we had to learn phonetics just to be able to do dialects and all that stuff. I’m somebody who does better just hearing it. I’ll just imitate it, and I get it better that way. When I know too much information, I’m not great.

I never wanted to be like anyone growing up. It’s always been about the enjoyment, and I’ve just never wanted to imitate anyone.

We must be vigilant in sharing our stories and our truths as queer parents of color at every chance we get if we hope to see art imitate real life.

How quick are we to learn: that is, to imitate what others have done or thought before. And how slow to understand: that is, to see the deeper connections.

I’m easy to imitate. All you need are the soft-boiled egg eyes and the bedroom voice.

When I was offered ‘Hawkeye,’ it was very intimidating at first because that book is so loved and so successful, commercially and critically. The worst thing you could do is try to imitate what they did because, in the end, you’re just going to get a watered-down version of what they did.

Always imitate the behavior of the winners when you lose.

I always modeled myself on Ronaldinho. He was one of my favourites who I followed a lot – his magic made us want to imitate him and his football. Is my goal celebration a tribute to him? Yes, of course. I like him a lot.

Even if I were to try to imitate Kurosawa I know that it’s absolutely impossible. That era of film was just something else, including the actors. Everything about that era was on a completely different level.

My motto is never to try to imitate anybody: I have always looked inward and followed the inward voice.

Well, you might as well imitate your own program because if you don’t, someone else will.

If you skate with an Olympic level skater, they make you so much better because you’re skating behind them, and you’re trying to imitate their stride and their stance. It’s like having the world’s greatest training wheels.

I want to see good-quality comedy shows, not the slapstick ones or where people imitate others.

I would write down the lyrics to ‘C.R.E.A.M.’ in Korean – not translating it, but phonetically writing out each word. I didn’t know what they were saying, so I would just write everything down as I heard it. I would recite it and imitate it like that. That’s how I started to write my own raps.