Rajneesh Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

Don't imitate. If you want to know who you are, please avoid imitation, that's a way of avoiding knowing yourself.

When you get to heaven God won't ask you why you weren't more like Billy Graham. He may ask you why you weren't more like you. Get in touch with who you are. Lead with your own unique style. Be yourself and let God use you.

As nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she gave him a character of his own, too; and yet we, O foolish race! must try our very best to ape some one or two of our neighbors, whose ideas fit us no more than their breeches!

Each individual's way is going to be different. Never follow anybody. That is the greatest calamity that can happen to a man. Once you start following somebody else, you become a carbon copy. You become an imitation.

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

Don't be imitators. The mind is an imitator, because it is easier to play the game of imitation than to become authentically true. Many ideas have been given to you: become like a Buddha, become like Jesus. become like Krishna - as if you have to become everybody else EXCEPT yourself. As if God is only against you. He's for Krishna, for Christ, for Mahavir, for Buddha - only against you. Then why does He create you? Then He seems simply foolish. Why does He go on creating you? If He's interested in Buddha, Hc can create Buddhas. Why you?

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

I feel like it's important, especially at young age, to find exactly what it is that makes your style so important as opposed to just trying to fit into the iconic styles of performers out there.

Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.

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.

There were times in my career when I would try to write songs like Bob Dylan... Artists get hooked up in that. To be a follower, you lose.

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.

No one can be profoundly original who does not avoid eccentricity.

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

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

The amazing thing now is that most of those so-called critics who were telling me to find my own voice seem to have lost theirs.

I'm not the kind of person who tries to be cool or trendy, I'm definitely an individual.

If you try to follow everyone else's mold, you'll probably fail at some point because God created us uniquely for a reason.

We've all forgotten how to be original.

The great man who gives a true transcript of his mind fascinates and instructs. Most writers suppress individuality. They wish to please the public.

We all want to be special, to stand out; there's nothing wrong with this. The irony is that every human being is special to start with, because we're unique to start with. But we then go through some sort of boot camp from the age of zero to about 18 where we learn everything we can about how not to be unique.