Novelty quotes
133 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty."
"The need for novelty is the characteristic of an alienated gorilla."
"The more the schemata are differentiated, the smaller the gap between the new and the familiar becomes, so that novelty, instead of constituting an annoyance avoided by the subject, becomes a problem and invites searching."
"Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview."
"Survival prospects are poor for an animal that is not suspicious of novelty."
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside novelty — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Many pleasant things are better when they belong to someone else. When things belong to others, we enjoy them twice as much, without the risk of losing them, and with the pleasure of novelty."
"Our fascination with weather: its caprices and changes as an antidote to the eternal repetition of daily life; a helpful illusion of novelty"
"I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don’t interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty."
"The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity."
"Western society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative that is quite as arbitrary as the most primitive taboo: not merely the duty to foster invention and constantly to create technological novelties, but equally the duty to surrender to these novelties unconditionally, just because they are offered, without respect to their human consequences."
"Music, in the best sense, does not require novelty; nay, the older it is, and the more we are accustomed to it, the greater its effect."
"The delight of opening a new pursuit, or a new course of reading, imparts the vivacity and novelty of youth even to old age."
"It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us; the charms of novelty have the same power."
"The ultimate metaphysical ground is the creative advance into novelty."
"Novelty is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity; but art and nature have stores inexhaustible by human intellects, and every moment produces something new to him who has quickened his faculties by diligent observation."
"A culture must be reasonably stable, but it must also change, and it will presumably be strongest if it can avoid excessive respect for tradition and fear of novelty on the one hand and excessively rapid change on the other."
"No mistake is more to be deplored than the conception that a system of morals and religion should derive any portion of its authority either from the circumstance of its novelty or its antiquity, that it should be judged excellent, not because it is reasonable or true, but because no person has ever thought of it before, or because it has been thought of from the beginning of time."
"We do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value - a test, it is true, which can only be slowly and cautiously applied, for we are none of us infallible judges of conformity."
"All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance."
"The hapless wit has his labors always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another."
"Admiration must be continued by that novelty which first produces it; and how much soever is given, there must always be reason to imagine that more remains."
"To build and strengthen new connections, the brain needs the challenge of fresh and unusual stimuli. .... There's a lot of evidence to suggest that repetition is bad for brain health, and novelty is good."
"And I will capture your minds with sweet novelty. [Lat., Dulcique animos novitate tenebo.]"
"There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness."
"If refined sense, and exalted sense, be not so useful as common sense, their rarity, their novelty, and the nobleness of their objects, make some compensation, and render them the admiration of mankind."
