Steve Martin Quotes

I think I always had, like, a rebellious spirit. But it wasn't a rebellious spirit to do wrong. It was a rebellious spirit to do something different.

I learned the word non-conformist in fourth grade and immediately announced that I would grow up to become one.

Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.

I was always a rebel in the sense that I always wanted to go my own road and do something that nobody else has done.

I don't imagine myself, my work, or my life, fitting into any kind of standardized path. In fact, the idea of there even being a standard freaks me out a lot.

I was the bohemian in my family, the "this is my favorite shoe and I don't care if it has tape around it" kind of person. The tape could become a fashion statement. Or a political statement.

I just like doing things from my own head.

Different is better. I get more jobs being different.

In a society that tries to standardize thinking, individuality is not highly prized.

The educator should do anything but advise the child to do what everybody does. He should rather rejoice when he sees in the child tendencies to deviation.

It's a question of not copying the masters, to look for something, good or bad, for oneself. To enter this liberated state of mind, one cannot copy the others.

The creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept.

When you don't dress like everybody else, you don't have to think like everybody else.

Punk has always been about doing things your own way. What it represents for me is ultimate freedom and a sense of individuality.

I didn't want to do something typical.

Unless you hit your television with a sledgehammer, you're not going to be able to be an individual.

I never follow anybody's path, what they've done.

The American people ... have a stake in con-conformity, for they know that the American genius is non-conformist.

I make no concessions to conformism.

My early experiences in animation taught me that following someone else is not a great idea.

My art and my creativities were totally something that was of my own heart and mind. I could never let anybody dictate to me what I should write and how I would write it.

You really do have to be different. You really do have to set yourself apart.

I don't follow trends. I just do what I like doing.

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 movies I do have to be different in some way. Nothing vanilla will do.