Once avant-garde artists receive official recognition, they start a double life. In one, they inspire younger artists to do more. In the other, they inspire a mass of imitators who make the work respectable and exclusionary. The artists and their art become intellectual brand names.

Margo Jefferson

Madonna is her own Hollywood studio - a popelike mogul and divine superstar in one. She has a laserlike instinct for publicity, aided by her visual genius for still photography (which none of her legion of imitators has). Unfortunately, her public life has dissolved into a series of staged photo ops.

Camille Paglia

Students must have initiative; they should not be mere imitators. They must learn to think and act for themselves - and be free.

Cesar Chavez

Background singers who are any good have to be great imitators.

Darlene Love

Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.

Friedrich Schiller

O imitators, you slavish herd!

Horace

What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.

Igor Stravinsky

Once avant-garde artists receive official recognition, they start a double life. In one, they inspire younger artists to do more. In the other, they inspire a mass of imitators who make the work respectable and exclusionary. The artists and their art become intellectual brand names.

Margo Jefferson

Everyone always gets a little irritated by imitators, but mostly I'm flattered. What if you never did anything anyone wanted to copy?

Mark Kurlansky

Pros in state capitals across the country and inside the Beltway might be more skeptical, but they're still vulnerable. They should be on vigilant watch for Sacha Baron Cohen and a legion of his imitators.

Michael Caputo

The protest years were over, not just for me but for a whole generation, and in music, just like in politics, many of the greatest talents were dead or in exile, and their place was filled by third-rate imitators.

Nina Simone

In some ways, 'The Little Mermaid' was old-fashioned. Rendered in the hand-drawn style, it was the last Disney animated feature to use cels and Xeroxing. Pixar and its CGI imitators soon made that rigorous process obsolete.

Richard Corliss

I am begining to look more and more like my miserable imitators.

Rudolph Valentino

I have to say there are a lot of me-too products and companies. Yet another social network, of the 15th flavor - that's common in every new technology revolution. There are imitators who have marginal improvements.

Tim O'Reilly

Consumers and retailers should always beware of imitators.

Vince Offer