Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes

You want to stake your own claim. You don't want to be called a copycat.

Man is an idiot. He doesn't know how to do anything without copying, without imitating, without plagiarizing, without aping. It might even have been that man invented generation by coitus after seeing the grasshopper copulate.

To the extent that independent means you're willing to attempt to put your own ideas, personality, and commitment to the material on screen, then of course I hope I'm independent until the day I die.

If you copy then it is not self-expression.

I'm not following anybody's tracks, I'm making my own baby.

Work out of your work. Don't work out of anybody else's work.

Do what is right... do it with honesty and vigor. Be creative - that's important. Don't follow what other people are doing.

Don't look at all at what other people are doing. Think of what you're doing as completely fresh because if you imitate you're dead.

Trends are dangerous; you will fail if you design for them. You cannot follow the work of others. I have my own DNA, my own formula. I always stay true to myself and to the brand.

The way we do our architecture is to show that we can come up with our own solutions. We don't just take orders.

In the era we came up in, you had to have your own thing.

A scientist, an artist, a citizen is not like a child who needs papa methodology and mama rationality to give him security and direction, he can take care of himself, for he is the inventor not only of laws, theories, pictures, plays, forms of music, ways of dealing with his fellow man, institutions, but also entire world view, he is the inventor of entire forms of like.

The only ones who can really benefit by consulting the model are those who can produce their effect without a model.

We grow up thinking that the best answer is in someone else's brain. Much of our education is an elaborate game of 'guess what's in the teacher's head?' What the world really needs to know right now is what kind of dreams and ideas are in your head.

I live in my own place - have never copied anyone even half, and at any master who lacks the grace - to laugh at himself - I laugh.

Authors from whom others steal should not complain, but rejoice. Where there is no game there are no poachers.

I always took a great deal of pride in being original.

Originality is undetected plagiarism.

No man was ever great by imitation.

I don't have any influences, any heroes, it's just me.

I just like doing things from my own head.

No, generally I think influence is used as a nice word for plagiarism.

What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it; what another would have written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself-and thus make yourself indispensable.

To refrain from imitation is the best revenge.

Doing it your own way, not having to go exactly by the book to be successful.