Original Quotes

#1. I admire anyone who can come up with something original. But not originality alone, because there can be originality in stupidity, with no musical description of any emotion or any beauty the man has seen, or any kind of life he has lived.

Charles Mingus

#2. Will Rogers once said it is not the original investment in a Congressman that counts; it is the upkeep.

John F. Kennedy

#3. Once upon a time fairy tales were told to audiences of young and old alike. It is only in the last century that such tales were deemed fit only for small children, stripped of much of their original complexity, sensuality, and power to frighten and delight.

Terri Windling

#4. There is no original sin. You don't have to pay repentance to anything or anybody.

Desmond Harrington

#5. If you want to be a writer in the world you really have to sit down and say, Why do I want to do this and why was I drawn to it to begin with? And keep reminding yourself to return to that original impulse.

Dorianne Laux

#6. No, it's interesting to remake a film for the contemporary audience today. I think it's a good idea; it needs to respect the original idea. Don't just take the title and change everything else.

Dario Argento

#7. We each are artists of the self, creating a collage -- a new and original work of art -- out of scraps and fragments of identifications. The people with whom we identify are, positively or negatively, always important to us. Our feelings toward them are, in some way, always intense.

Judith Viorst

#8. Be yourself, because an original is better than a copy.

Greyson Chance

#9. The elderly have weathered enough squalls to know that this one, too, shall pass. They own the courage to be original; they've learned to hold their own values above the conventional wisdom.

Sarah Ferguson

#10. Mitt Romney comes from a Mormon background. I don't know how many wives he has. I'm not saying that I believe in that, I'm just saying he was born on a Mormon compound. I'm not a 'Wifer' but for some reason he's never shown his original marriage certificate.

Bill Maher

#11. To be young means to be original, to have remained nearer to the sources of life: it means to be able to stand up and shake off the fetters of an outlived civilization, to dare
where others lack the courage
to plunge again into the elemental.

Thomas Mann

#12. I've always been making original music. I think that when I sat down with Losing Focus, I approached it different. I had a clearer understanding of who I was talking to, because I was able to go out and tour and see them right in front of me. I wanted to speak to them and speak about this lifestyle.

Young De

#13. The world has become uglier since it began to look into a mirror every day; so let us settle for the mirror image and do without an inspection of the original.

Karl Kraus

#14. We were working with this lousy print and it just wasn't going to be good enough. I said that we should get the original negative and do it from that. Well, a couple guys pointed out that the negative was locked up over at Deluxe.

David Fincher

#15. Designers + artists see potential in things where others do not. I think artists in many ways are the original entrepreneurs.

Brian Chesky

#16. I'd been writing for as long as I could remember, but once I read Otherworld, I'd stopped writing original stories to focus on fan fiction. It was such a rich, exciting world that I couldn't think of writing anything else.

Allison Van Diepen

#17. Any director who comes into a revival owes a great deal to the original director. If I know the backbone works, it gives me, as a director, much more freedom to bring something new to it or try something different.

Scott Ellis

#18. You can find truly original pieces of writing, but they're original because you go, "Who would have even have thought of that?," or, "Why would anyone ever want to go see that?"

Doug Liman

#19. Is that why the parents of dead children spend half the rest of their lives in darkened rooms? Are they hoping the ghosts will return with all their original power? She

Martin Amis

#20. Five or six songs leaked from the original version of 'Encore.' So I had to go in and make new songs to replace them.

Eminem

#21. Don't worry about people stealing an idea," he once told a student. "If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

Walter Isaacson

#22. Nothing is set in stone. A bird can be refolded into a boat, a fish, a kimono, or any other extravagant vision. At other times it aches to return to its original folds. The paper begins to fray. It tires, rebels.

Tor Udall

#23. Time's arrow is the loss of fidelity in compression. A sketch, not a photograph. A memory is a re-creation, precious because it is both more and less than the original.

Ken Liu

#24. The Original Sin which brought us to the brink of bankruptcy and dictatorship was the Federal Income Tax Amendment and its illegitimate child, Federal Aid.

Tom Anderson

#25. But you know, as you say, the original versions of my films are getting out there, slowly.

Dario Argento

#26. Books and movies inspire me, but I do my best to keep my stories as original as possible.

Nicholas Sparks

#27. The Hebrew original does not say, 'Do not kill.' It says, 'Do not murder.' Both Hebrew and English have two words for taking a life - one is 'kill' (harag, in Hebrew) and the other is 'murder' (ratzach in Hebrew).

Dennis Prager

#28. I've always wanted to be on an original cast recording. I grew up listening to them, and now to know that my voice is heard on three or four of them is just surreal. I never thought I would be that person.

Laura Osnes

#29. Dear friends, whenever you want to understand a text of Scripture, try to read the original

Charles Spurgeon

#30. You don't learn from good people - they've found what works for them and are completely original; you learn from the people who are bad. You think: 'Oh dear, I'm not going to do that.'

Helen McCrory

#31. It must be asked here: why does the patient go on being worried by this that belongs to the past? The answer must be that the original experience of primitive agony cannot get into the past tense unless the ego can first gather it into its own present time experience ... .

Mark Epstein

#32. As is the case with all original creators, Charles Chaplin's working life was an amalgam of arrogant self-confidence and deflating self-doubt.

Garson Kanin

#33. Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all.

Abraham Lincoln

#34. Meditation is coming back to your original self, if we can use self without a sense of self. It's perfect, clear light, radiant, infinite mind of the universe, as it is, without identifying with qualities

Frederick Lenz

#35. Revenge is the capitalism of the poor: conserve the original wound, defer immediate gratification, fatten the first insult with new insults, invest and reinvest spite, and ke waiting for the perfect moment to strike back.

Aravind Adiga

#36. Hockey is the original extreme sport.

Tom Ward

#37. Everyone is talented, original and has something important to say.

Brenda Ueland

#38. There are very few record companies who will entertain a middle-aged woman coming to them with original material.

Alison Moyet

#39. Robert Altman's 'Nashville' is my all-time favorite film because it covers all the bases - it's original, moving, and has something to say, but also funny and incredibly entertaining.

Douglas Wood

#40. I have been looking for a name for years and of course it sounds like it would be easy. Americana came along for the same reason. But to me Americana means Original music with prominent folk/rock influence. Ameripolitan is Original music with prominent roots influence.

Dale Watson

#41. Just because there is a problem doesn't mean that we have to solve it, if the cure is going to be more expensive than the original ailment.

Bjorn Lomborg

#42. And if a man consider the original of this great Ecclesiastical Dominion, he will easily perceive, that the Papacy , is no other than the Ghost of the deceased Romane Empire , sitting crowned upon the grave thereof: For so did the Papacy start up on a Sudden out of the Ruines of that Heathen Power.

Thomas Hobbes

#43. Wish to seek if my quote are original? Save your time - Everything is old under the sun.

Garry Fitchett

#44. It's not like the original movie where you thought it was the mother committing the murders, but it was actually the son. I don't think it's possible to create the kind of shock today that we created in 1959. And I don't even want to try.

Joseph Stefano

#45. The original, shimmering self gets buried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all. Instead we live out all the other selves, which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world's weather

Frederick Buechner

#46. I grew up with 'Star Wars' and was a massive fan of the original films.

Andy Serkis

#47. The few times I've tried to write original screenplays, it's a difficult process because I just don't feel like I know the characters the way I know them after the year or two it takes to write a novel.

Tom Perrotta

#48. Why the desire for death.
A clean paper or pure white wall.
One false line, a scratch, a mistake.
Unerasable. So obscureby
adding million other tracings,
blend it, cover over.
But the original scratch remains,
written in gold blood, shining.
Desire for a Perfect Life.

Jim Morrison

#49. Leave the gun. Take the cannoli. That's from the original Godfather,

Stephen King

#50. Man for all his genius is but an echo of the original Voice, a reflection of the uncreated Light.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

#51. I am much more aware of making the plot more original, avoiding contrivance, having the story matter much more. I used to think more about symbols consciously. Now I think much more about the story.

Dara Horn

#52. I am now satisfied that the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called negro melodies. This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States.

Antonin Dvorak

#53. SUBJECT: Real original
Dear Dark Assholes,
I get the point. Showing me that you know how to log onto a computer and utilize Google must've taken some pretty keen strategizing on your part.
Really, really cool trick. Now leave me the hell alone.
-The DL

S.L. Jennings

#54. Art builds upon art, builds upon art ... nothing is purely original. We're all inspired by something ... or someone. It's a never-ending chain of ideas ... and it's magical.

Shannon Taylor Hodnett

#55. I did write a couple of original screenplays, but I'd rather write plays.

Beth Henley

#56. I took part of Alan Silvestri's theme on the original [movie], which I really liked, and I pulled it into it new theme, which became kind of a hybrid. I really enjoyed that.

Danny Elfman

#57. Is it not at least occasionally the case that we set out on a clear and simple mission and return with something undreamed of? Whether or not we accomplish our original intention becomes unimportant.

Lawrence Kushner

#58. Yes. Otherwise I could have done a lot of Hollywood movies. After Crouching Tiger I got a lot of offers, but I turned them down because they were all victim roles - poor girls sold to America to be a wife or whatever. I know I have the ability to go deeper, to take on more original roles than that.

Zhang Ziyi

#59. By the bold and running use of metaphor he will amplify and give us, not the thing itself, but the reverberation and reflection which, taken into his mind, the thing has made; close enough to the original to illustrate it, remote enough to heighten, enlarge, and make splendid.

Virginia Woolf

#60. The original 'Edge of Darkness' was fantastic, a fabulous series. It was of its time, but this film version shows that times really haven't changed.

Ray Winstone

#61. There is no original or primary gender a drag imitates, but gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original.

Judith Butler

#62. I started in theater and I wanted to write plays, but I never really found an original voice as a playwright.

Atom Egoyan

#63. If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original.

Ken Robinson

#64. Be original and find your inner voice. The rest will follow.

A.R. Rahman

#65. All the translations of a poem in all possible languages may add nuance to nuance and, by a kind of mutual retouching, by correcting one another, may give an increasingly faithful picture of the poem they translate, yet they will never give the inner meaning of the original.

Henri Bergson

#66. I never read the translation before publication. The most important things for me is that the emotion is captured in such a way that the feelings that are in the original are there, much more than the details, if they are right or wrong.

Karl Ove Knausgard

#67. Finding temporary and specific causes for misfortune is the art of hope: Temporary causes limit helplessness in time, and specific causes limit helplessness to the original situation.

Martin Seligman

#68. It will be the mistake of your life if you go into print in your own defence [sic]. Your denial will reach a new set of people andstart them to talking, while the ones who read the original charges will never see the refutation of them.

Susan B. Anthony

#69. It is simply an invariable truth in the history of politics, in the history of government, that whenever a new power is acquired in the name of some threat, it always - not sometimes, not often, not usually -it always extends beyond its original application, beyond its original justification.

Glenn Greenwald

#70. Odorous as a crateful of bad eggs with the miasma of original sin.

Anthony Burgess

#71. Knowledge comes through likeness. And so because the soul may know everything, it is never at rest until it comes to the original idea, in which all things are one. And there it comes to rest in God.

Meister Eckhart

#72. She was herself, the original. Everyone else was just a copy.

Jon Courtenay Grimwood

#73. When it comes to fashion, I'm just inspired by anyone who has their own flair or piece on anything. I love originality. I love when people bring some bold and don't do what's been done or being done. I don't think I have anyone in particular. Just anyone who's original really inspires me.

Blake Michael

#74. Every person born in this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique.

Martin Buber

#75. Mankind's original destiny was to extend God's glorious dominion of love throughout the earth

Sunday Adelaja

#76. If they haven't heard it before it's original.

Gene Fowler

#77. Hereafter we all have to be redeemed. The world is pulling with a thousand strings. We sin because of indifference and negligence and heap new guilt on the old original one. Our life is a
chain of sin and expiation controlled by a destiny that can not be understood.

Joseph Goebbels

#78. In short, intelligence, considered in what seems to be its original feature, is the faculty of manufacturing artificial objects, especially tools to make tools, and of indefinitely urging the manufacture.

Henri Bergson

#79. The effect of studying masterpieces is to make me admire and do otherwise. So it must be on every original artist to some degree, on me to a marked degree.
(from notes on 'Heraclitean Fire')

Gerard Manley Hopkins

#80. I don't need to always quote others because I actually have original thoughts".

~R. Alan Woods [2012]

R. Alan Woods

#81. Some say that this is the Israelis' original sin. With this I do not agree but I think we can call it Israel's immaculate misconception.

Avishai Margalit

#82. Hollywood's thinking is very typical. And it's just really predictable too. And I think at Hollywood, these box office movies are flopping. I mean, there hasn't been an original thought coming out of Hollywood since the '80s.

Andrea Tantaros

#83. We are assumed to be rather hopeless
swallowed up by incorrect notions, divorced from the original genius with which we are born, lost within days of living this distracting life.

Elizabeth Berg

#84. The greater part of our writers, ... have become so original, that no one cares to imitate them: and those who never quote in return are seldom quoted.

Isaac D'Israeli

#85. My original project was called 'The Wheel'; there's a record out there called 'Desire & The Dissolving Man,' 'The Memory Of Loss' as well. There's also 'Falling Faster Than You Can Run,' also 'Closer'; all of that's on our website.

Nathaniel Rateliff

#86. I don't tend to be a nitpicker when I'm watching movies, so as long as something is true to the spirit of the original, that's very much what we got for. You try to never do something that the original author wouldn't have done themselves.

Jane Goldman

#87. In nine out of ten cases the original wish to write is the wish to make oneself felt[ellipsis in source] the non-essential writer never gets past that wish.

Elizabeth Bowen

#88. Once the fired stone is out of the kiln, it is still possible to mentally reconstruct it in its original form.

Andy Goldsworthy

#89. A man should be more original than a bouquet of roses and a box of chocolates. Flowers die and sugar sticks to your hips like a permanent record to a criminal.

Dannika Dark

#90. Shakespeare does a great job of taking 5,000-year-old stories and turning them into modern pieces that are true to the original essence but are completely remade.

Mark Ruffalo

#91. I ain't got an original thought in my head. If it ain't got the scent of divinity to it, I ain't interested in it

Cormac McCarthy

#92. Knowing what you're up against is part of the strength of writing something that is even, I guess, considered halfway original, knowing what's out there to begin with.

Phil Anselmo

#93. It's an honor to have been part of something so core to so many lives. The show has evolved beyond it's original intent and form and has transcended ... itself!

Christopher Knight

#94. A fallacy has been created that the original empire of the Guptas existed in Magadha while all evidences - epigraphic, numismatic, and the Pauranic - go in favour of establishing the region of Eastern Uttar Pradesh as the original home of the Guptas.

T. R. Sharma

#95. entropy taken with a negative sign', which by the way is not my invention. It happens to be precisely the thing on which Boltzmann's original argument turned.

Erwin Schrodinger

#96. Once you make a decision, you can never go back and change it. Sometimes, farther down the line, you have a chance to alter its effects. But the original decision is there forever.

Timothy Zahn

#97. If you train yourself in memory work, you fearlessly attack and rearrange your material, for you can retain your original impression.

John F. Carlson

#98. the question "Why?" only adds to their problem. In addition to their original distress, they must now analyze the cause and come up with a reasonable explanation.

Adele Faber

#99. We would say homosexuality is not the original design for sexuality. Therefore, it's not good for human flourishing. We want people to do things that are good for human flourishing. But that's not what sends you to heaven or Hell.

Timothy Keller

#100. [Liv Corfixen] very much part of my life in that she's everything in my life and we found a way to use each other much more on a creative level as well. She was kind of the idea for this movie so I wanted to acknowledge that. She gave me the original idea to make the film.

Nicolas Winding Refn