Jonathan Swift Quotes

We are in truth, more than half what we are by imitation. The great point is to choose good models and to study them with care.

Man is an imitative creature.

Man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do.

Imitation is the first instinct of the awakening mind.

We are trying to learn from the consequences of one's peers' actions.

So much of what I do has been based off of my heroes and guys I've watched come up.

Each of us is in fact what he is almost exclusively by virtue of his imitative-ness.

Imitators are a slavish herd and fools in my opinion.

No living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody.

It is by imitation, far more than by precept, that we learn everything; and what we learn thus, we acquire not only more effectually, but more pleasantly.

Kids are sponges. They will emulate what they see and what they're exposed to.

Most everything I've done I've copied from somebody else.

Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise.

Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery - it's the sincerest form of learning.

Imitators are but a servile kind of cattle.

It is a fool's sheep that breaks loose twice.

Men are so constituted that every one undertakes what he sees another successful in, whether he has aptitude for it or not.

Any man can make a mistake; only a fool keeps making the same one.

Imitation is the sincerest form of insecurity.

I know from having had a child, and from having been a child myself, that children will copy you. So, the best way to get them to read, is to read. The best way to get them to do anything is to do it yourself, and they will absolutely copy you. That way, you don't have to worry about what's supposedly age appropriate, a child will pick something up when the child is ready.

Study the habits of the people you want to be like and then imitate them. If they are succeeding, they must be doing something right.

Sometimes we meet a fool with wit, never one with discretion.

Only fools need suffer to learn.

Habit and imitation--there is nothing more perennial in us than these two. They are the source of all working, and all apprenticeship, of all practice, and all learning, in this world.