Innovation Quotes

Originality is nothing but judicious plagiarism.

Voltaire (FrançoisMarie Arouet)

The most original of authors are not so because they advance what is new, but more because they know how to say something, as if it had never been said before.

Johann von Goethe

Anyone who has invented a better mousetrap, or the contemporary equivalent, can expect to be harassed by strangers demanding that you read their unpublished manuscripts or undergo the humiliation of public speaking, usually on remote Midwestern campuses.

Barbara Ehrenreich

Pure innovation is more gross than error.

George Chapman

Most new things are not good, and die an early death; but those which push themselves forward and by slow degrees force themselves on the attention of mankind are the unconscious productions of human wisdom, and must have honest consideration, and must not be made the subject of unreasoning prejudice.

Thomas Brackett Reed

I see nothing in it new and valuable. What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable.

Daniel Webster

All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.

John Stuart Mill

Originality is the one thing unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.

John Stuart Mill

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good.

Samuel Johnson

I found you essay to be good and original. However, the part that was original was not good and the part that was good was not original.

Samuel Johnson

Let us not forget that the greatest composers were also the greatest thieves. They stole from everyone and everywhere.

Pau (Pablo) Casals

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

Andre Maurois

To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of disciplines.

Steve Jobs

All cases are unique and very similar to others.

TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning.

Maxwell Planck

Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.

Laurence J. Peter

Nearly all our originality comes from the stamp that time impresses upon our sensibility.

Charles Baudelaire

Innovation! One cannot be forever innovating. I want to create classics.

Coco Chanel

Everything has been said, and we have come too late, now that men have been living and thinking for seven thousand years and more.

Jean de la Bruyere

The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar... Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have generally been persecuted, and always derided as fools and madmen.

Aldous Huxley