Rajneesh Quotes

I discovered very early that it wasn't quite enough for me to imitate people.

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.

I don't want to be anyone's mimic.

How much more interesting life would be if only more people had the courage and skill to act themselves, instead of abjectly understudying some one else!

It's a shame to waste [the uniqueness that is you], by doing what someone else has done.

Be neither a conformist or a rebel, for they are really the same thing. Find your own path, and stay on it.

To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.

If you're always looking at someone else, trying to imitate them, how can your natural gifts ever emerge?

No man was ever great by imitation.

To refrain from imitation is the best revenge.

There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own.

The more time we invest imitating others, the less that's available to discover and be ourselves.

I think most people don't like others who, without a voice of their own, emulate the other. I certainly don't want anybody just to pick up my thoughts and hand them back to me.

I guess if you have an original take on life, or something about you is original, you don't have to study people who came before you. You don't have to mimic anybody. You just have a gut feeling inside, an instinct that tells you what's right for you, and you can't do it in any other way.

People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ideas, fitting in instead of standing out.

Yeah, it's nice to look up to people, but the more you try to be somebody else, the less you are of yourself.

There's room for everybody on the planet to be creative and conscious if you are your own person. If you're trying to be like somebody else, then there is isn't.

You just get out there and be what you want to be. That's part of evolving and part of staying true to yourself - part of remaining alive in a real authentic, long-term sense creatively: not listening to what other people tell you to be.

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

At WSX I think I was very much trying to figure it out on my own and we were creating our own style and our own thing. I can only speak for myself, I was not trying to be anything. I was not trying to be like anyone else.

I certainly wouldn't want to be a Mini Me of any of the people whose footsteps I've followed in.

Be stupid, be dumb, be funny, if that's who you are. Don't try to be someone that society wants you to be; that's stupid. So be yourself.

Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist.

Note that this journey is uniquely yours, no one else's. So the path has to be your own. You cannot imitate somebody else's journey and still be true to yourself. Are you prepared to honor your uniqueness in this way?

If knowing yourself and being yourself were as easy to do as to talk about, there wouldn't be nearly so many people walking around in borrowed postures, spouting secondhand ideas, trying desperately to fit in rather than to stand out.