Imitation Quotes

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to."

[MovieMaker Magazine #53 - Winter, January 22, 2004 ]”
― Jim Jarmusch

“Through others we become ourselves.”
― Lev S. Vygotsky

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood

“Do not repeat after me words that you do not understand. Do not merely put on a mask of my ideas, for it will be an illusion and you will thereby deceive yourself.”
― J. Krishnamurti

“As much as I live I shall not imitate them or hate myself for being different to them”
― Orhan Pamuk, Snow

“Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.”
― Samuel Johnson, The Rambler

“When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.”
― Eric Hoffer

“Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery - it's the sincerest form of learning.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“when the imitation of Christ does not mean to live a life like Christ, but to live your life as authentically as Christ lived his, then there are many ways and forms in which a man can be a Christian.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer : Ministry in Contemporary Society

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood

“Acquiring knowledge is a form of imitation.”
― J. Krishnamurti

“An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.”
― François-René de Chateaubriand, The Genius of Christianity or the Spirit and Beauty of the Christian Religion

“Stay true to yourself. An original is worth more than a copy.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“As a result of his experiments he concluded that imitation was a real evil that had to be broken before real rhetoric teaching could begin. This imitation seemed to be an external compulsion. Little children didn’t have it. It seemed to come later on, possibly as a result of school itself.

That sounded right, and the more he thought about it the more right it sounded. Schools teach you to imitate. If you don’t imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A’s. Originality on the other hand could get you anything – from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.”
― Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books

“Above all things -- read. Read the great stylists who cannot be copied rather than the successful writers who must not be copied.”
― Ngaio Marsh, Death on the Air and Other Stories

“And whenever any one informs us that he has found a man who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man –whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyze the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation.”
― Plato, The Republic

“Fake sUCKs!”
― Toba Beta

“But once an original book has been written-and no more than one or two appear in a century-men of letters imitate it, in other words, they copy it so that hundreds of thousands of books are published on exactly the same theme, with slightly different titles and modified phraseology. This should be able to be achieved by apes, who are essentially imitators, provided, of course, that they are able to make use of language.”
― Pierre Boulle, Planet of the Apes

“A person who is truly cool is a work of art. And remember, original works of art cost exponentially higher than imitations. Just take a look at the the coolest people in history. They will always be a part of history for being extremely original individuals, not imitations.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“A prudent man will always try to follow in the footsteps of great men and imitate those who have been truly outstanding, so that, if he is not quite as skillful as they, at least some of their ability may rub off on him.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“Imitation is not inspiration, and inspiration only can give birth to a work of art. The least of man's original emanation is better than the best of borrowed thought.”
― Albert Pinkham Ryder

“Be yourself because an original is worth more than just a copy.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.”
― William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals

“Nice is a city of ghosts and specters, but I hope not to become one of them right away.”
― Patrick Modiano, Rue des boutiques obscures

“The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Divinity School Address

“Our historical experience teaches us that men imitate one another, that their attitudes are statistically calculable, their opinions manipulable, and that man is therefore less an individual (a subject) than an element in a mass.”
― Milan Kundera, Encounter

“The fake seen tawdry.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“Imitation cannot go above its model.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Divinity School Address

“Greatness without models? Inconceivable. One could not be the thing itself - Reality. One must be satisfied with symbols. Make it the object of imitation to reach and release the high qualities. Make peace therefore with intermediacy and representations. Otherwise the individual must be the failure he now sees and knows himself to be.”
― Saul Bellow, Mr. Sammler's Planet