Sometimes it’s flattering when people copy you, but sometimes it gets to a breaking point.

If you keep proving stuff that others have done, getting confidence, increasing the complexities of your solutions – for the fun of it – then one day you’ll turn around and discover that nobody actually did that one!

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when – and he won’t necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either.

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

I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike.

No man was ever great by imitation.

All the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.

It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry ‚I could have thought of that‘ is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn’t, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.

Japan’s very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don’t think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that’s already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

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.

I never wanted to look pretty on stage and sing about something we’ve all heard about before.

I’ve always felt that what I have going for me is not my imagination, because everyone has an imagination. What I have is a relentlessly controlled imagination. What looks like wild invention is actually quite carefully calculated.

I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.

I believe in being an innovator.

When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old.

All art is but imitation of nature.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

There have been many great men that have flattered the people who ne’er loved them.

I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.

There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man’s self.

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

To refrain from imitation is the best revenge.

If you’re gonna make connections which are innovative… you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does.

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing, nobody had said it before.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

There’s no formula.

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.

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.

When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.

Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.

It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.

Sometimes you have the trends that’s not that cool. You may have certain artists portraying these trends and don’t really have that lifestyle, and then it gives off the wrong thing. And it becomes kinda corny after awhile. It’s really about keeping hip-hop original and pushing away the corniness in it.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ‚the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.‘ The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ‚Artist.‘

In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

If one has fear, there can be no initiative in the creative sense of the word. To have initiative in this sense is to do something original – to do it spontaneously, naturally, without being guided, forced, controlled. It is to do something which you love to do.

Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television.

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.

Knavery and flattery are blood relations.

I get that racism exists, but it’s not a catalyst for my content. I don’t need to talk about race to have material. My style of comedy is more self-deprecating. I think that makes me more relatable. When you deal with ‚topics‘ – race, white versus black – you’re not separating from the pack. You’re doing what everybody else is doing.

People ask me where I got my singing style. I didn’t copy my style from anybody.

In business or in life, don’t follow the wagon tracks too closely.

He that loves to be flattered is worthy o‘ the flatterer.

The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.

Every band I’ve worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they’ve gone somewhere that nobody else has been.

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

Cinema reflects culture and there is no harm in adapting technology, but not at the cost of losing your originality.

Faith, there hath been many great men that have flattered the people who ne’er loved them.