Yo-Yo Ma Quotes

The function of education is to help you from childhood not to imitate anybody, but be yourself all the time.

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

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.

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.

I don't feel I have to be Jackson Browne. Still, I like to say something.

Most of us only find our own voices after we've sounded like a lot of other people.

Write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

Do not internalize the industrial model. You are not one of the myriad interchangeable pieces, but a unique human being, and if you've got something to say, say it, and think well of yourself while you're learning to say it better.

Boys, you must strive to find your own voice, because the longer you wait to begin the less likely you are to find it at all.

Individuality' is the key to success.

In life, finding a voice is speaking and living the truth. Each of you is an original. Each of you has a distinctive voice. When you find it, your story will be told. You will be heard.

Whatever coast he's on, a man should be himself. I don't write in any particular idiom, I write Charles Mingus.

What Kierkegaard said about love is also true of creativity: every person must start at the beginning.

You should embrace who you are, and make the best person that you can be, not what somebody else wants you to be.

Everybody talks about finding your voice. Do your homework and your voice will find you.

Find your purpose, find your voice.

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?

He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise.

If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.

No one can write like Vallejo and not sound like a fraud. He's just too much himself and not you.

I feel, as an artist, I should be able to express who I am and the things I come from, and the places I want to also be.

There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own.

All that I am is me. So I'm not really a poet or a writer or an actor or an activist; I'm me, and these are things that I do.

I wanna be more like the Rihanna kind of, Beyonce kind of thing, but I don't want to compare myself to anybody, because I wanna be somebody new, too.

In every role, a part of me gets to come out.