John Stuart Mill on the Balance between Imitation and Originality
From John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, Chapter 3 “Of Individuality, as One of the Elements of Well-Being,” paragraph 3:
No one’s idea of excellence in conduct is that people should do absolutely nothing but copy one another. No one would assert that people ought not to put into their mode of life, and into the conduct of their concerns, any impress whatever of their own judgment, or of their own individual character. On the other hand, it would be absurd to pretend that people ought to live as if nothing whatever had been known in the world before they came into it; as if experience had as yet done nothing towards showing that one mode of existence, or of conduct, is preferable to another.