Dean Inge Quotes

Art is either revolution or plagiarism

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

An idea's birth is legitimate if one has the feeling that one is catching oneself plagiarizing oneself.

If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.

If you can't plagiarise yourself, who can you plagiarise?

I won't lie, I stole a lot of ideas from Giampaolo.

Bad writers have influences. Good writers steal.

One painter ought never to imitate the manner of any other; because in that case he cannot be called the child of nature, but the grandchild. It is always best to have recourse to nature, which is replete with such abundance of objects, than to the productions of other masters, who learnt everything from her.

Someone very smart once said to me, "Steal, don't borrow." So if there's anything good in anything anyone else does, it's fair game. I think that everything I've ever done at some point is part of someone else's legacy.

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

One must not imitate what one wants to create.

Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.

Sometimes a line enters your head, and you're so grateful for it. You go online to check to see if anyone wrote it before you. You must have stolen it.

I don't think anybody came into the movie business to be unoriginal and plagiarising and not having an original idea in their brain.

Originality is undetected plagiarism.

We call ourselves creators and we just copy.

If you copy then it is not self-expression.

I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.

Originality is the art of concealing your source.

Originality usually amounts only to plagiarizing something unfamiliar.

I think people who sample are cheating. It is like people who do collages. Use all of your own stuff.

Any creator owes a debt to past creation.

The only way you can get good, unless you're a genius, is to copy. That's the best thing. Just steal.

What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.

If you do come up with a new idea, in 4 seconds it will belong to somebody else.