Warren Bennis Quotes

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

When you're growing up, the most important thing is to try to not change yourself too much. Be you, because everyone else is taken.

When people say 'I want to be like you', I tell them if you want to be like me, then be yourself.

I didn't start to work until I realized what it was I had to offer. I stopped imitating performers I admired and started just being myself.

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

When we are honest - that's my saying - if we are honest then we will reveal ourselves. But we do not have to make an effort to be individualistic, different from others.

I learned, when I look in the mirror and tell my story, that I should be myself and not peep whatever everybody is doing.

Get to know the real you, rather than try to look like or dress like those around you.

I am who I am. I'm unique. I'm my own self.

I think when you start changing things, you're not being yourself.

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.

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

What does it mean to be yourself?” he asked. “If it means to do what you think you ought to do, then you’re doing that already. If it means to act like you’re exempt from society’s influence, that’s the worst advice in the world; you would probably stop bathing and wearing clothes. The advice to ‘be yourself’ is obviously nonsense. But our brains accept this tripe as wisdom because it is more comfortable to believe we have a strategy for life than to believe we have no idea how to behave.

Anybody who told you to be yourself simply couldn't have given you worse advice.

The greatest fear people have is that of being themselves. They want to be 50 Cent or someone else. They do what everyone else does even if it doesn’t fit where and who they are. But you get nowhere that way; your energy is weak and no one pays attention to you. You’re running away from the one thing that you own – what makes you different. I lost that fear. And once I felt the power that I had by showing the world I didn’t care about being like other people, I could never go back.

It's a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It's much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.

The more you try to be like someone else, the more you find yourself standing in the way.

If I wasted my time trying to be like everybody else when I was 10 and 11, I wouldn't be me today. So if you are gonna be the future rockstars, the future somebody, whatever you wanna be then you're wasting your time trying to be somebody else, because you'll never get to you.

The best way to be more like me is to be more like you.

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?

You've always made the mistake of being yourself.

Fundamentally, you can never be someone else. You can only be less of who you are.

You should not really entertaining anyone else, but trying to be yourself, because there are already more good books than you or I could ever read in our lifetime.

You can't try to be somebody you're not; that's not style. If someone says, 'Buy this - you'll be stylish,' you won't be stylish because you won't be you. You have to learn who you are first, and that's painful.

There's no reason to change what you are, but if you're not being you, then you need to acknowledge that.