John Stuart Mill Quotes

Originality is really important.

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.

We live in world that wants to burnish the rough edges and straighten the crooked line, but conformity doesn't beget greatness.

Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.

I don't want ever to be guilty of what my critics claim: doing formula without original elements.

There are no original ideas. There are only original people.

I'm constantly trying to be as original as I can.

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.

I hate anything that seems like something that has been done.

I think people are afraid to be original.

The one lesson I've learned from technology and food is the only time you know you're doing the wrong thing is when you're doing what everyone else is doing.

If I did what has already been done, I would be a plagiarist and would consider myself unworthy; so I do something different and people call me a scoundrel. I'd rather be a scoundrel than a plagiarist!

The human spirit lives on creativity and dies in conformity and routine.

If you're doing what everyone else is doing, you're doing it wrong.

All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.

Fashion isn't interesting when it comes from an uninspired place.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

I never liked to copy things that are out there. I always like to come up with something new, something different.

You can't make experimental work by copying past work.

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

I am against the whole cliche of the moment.

I am attracted to anything that does not feel derivative.

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

You want to stand out and be unique and do something different. I always try to zig when they zag - I guess it's a football term, but it applies to a lot of different areas of life.

The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.