Andre Gide Quotes

It is much easier to imitate something else that you know is accepted and loved than it is to look inside and follow your own compass, because you have no idea if you'll be accepted, if you'll be right, if your ideas are good, if your way is a path to success.

How much more interesting life would be if only more people had the courage and skill to act themselves, instead of abjectly understudying some one else!

If you spend your life walking through somebody else's museum, you never find out whether you're Rembrandt or not.

Each individual's way is going to be different. Never follow anybody. That is the greatest calamity that can happen to a man. Once you start following somebody else, you become a carbon copy. You become an imitation.

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.

If you're always looking at someone else, trying to imitate them, how can your natural gifts ever emerge?

I discovered very early that it wasn't quite enough for me to imitate people.

I feel like it's important, especially at young age, to find exactly what it is that makes your style so important as opposed to just trying to fit into the iconic styles of performers out there.

Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.

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.

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.

I've been telling my students, 'Imitate, imitate.' And they say, 'Well, what if I plagiarize, or what if I'm not original? I want to be myself.' And I always tell them, 'Your self will shine through'... If you allow yourself to feel deeply and honestly, what you say won't be like anyone else.

There were times in my career when I would try to write songs like Bob Dylan... Artists get hooked up in that. To be a follower, you lose.

I think most people don't like others who, without a voice of their own, emulate the other. I certainly don't want anybody just to pick up my thoughts and hand them back to me.

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

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

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

We've all forgotten how to be original.

The great man who gives a true transcript of his mind fascinates and instructs. Most writers suppress individuality. They wish to please the public.

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

There's room for everybody on the planet to be creative and conscious if you are your own person. If you're trying to be like somebody else, then there is isn't.

I was a pretty good imitator of Roy Acuff, but then I found out they already had a Roy Acuff, so I started singin' like myself.

Imitation is a caricature. Any imitation. Find out for yourself.

Sometimes you find your voice by trying to write like people, and sometimes you find it by trying to write unlike people.