Daniel J. Boorstin Quotes

Authors from whom others steal should not complain, but rejoice. Where there is no game there are no poachers.

If you steal from one author it's plagiarism; if you steal from many it's research.

Originality is undetected plagiarism.

Well, you might as well imitate your own program because if you don't, someone else will.

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

I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.

What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.

Actually, everything has been said in print... it's a battle of giants and it's something that Walt would say is none of your business - go right on and create the best you can.

The most important thing about intellectual property vs. creative expression is that copyright law was created not to stifle creativity but to encourage creativity.

I don't write a book so that it will be the final word; I write a book so that other books are possible, not necessarily written by me.

When I have something to say that I think will be too difficult for adults, I write it in a book for children. Children are excited by new ideas; they have not yet closed the doors and windows of their imaginations. Provided the story is good... nothing is too difficult for children.

Am I allowed to ask my book / whether it's true I wrote it?

Let's say I've directed that [writing] energy into writing my latest book but suddenly, I really want to write about an onion. I don't say to myself, "No, you have stay on the subject," because I know that the longer I stay on the subject the more boring I get. So, if my mind wants to write about an onion, it might be a deeper way to go into what I'm working on, even though it might seem irrelevant. This is how I've learned to follow my mind.

To exact of every man who writes that he should say something new, would be to reduce authors to a small number; to oblige the most fertile genius to say only what is new, would be to contract his volumes to a few pages. Yet, surely, there ought to be some bounds to repetition; libraries ought no more to be heaped for ever with the same thoughts differently expressed, than with the same books differently decorated.

Genius Borrows nobly.

The ideas aren't that important. Really they aren't. Everyone's got an idea for a book, a movie, a story, a TV series.

Memory is the friend of wit, but the treacherous ally of invention; there are many books that owe their success to two things; good memory of those who write them, and the bad memory of those who read them

Inspiration and stealing are two completely different things. If somebody wants to make a song like "Stairway to Heaven" and writes a song on acoustic guitar, Led Zeppelin does not own every song that's on acoustic guitar for the rest of time.

I was meticulously copying other art and then I realized I could just use a camera and put my time into an idea instead.

Thinking. This book contains some. Whether you try it at home is up to you.

Most authors steal their works, or buy.

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

Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.

I want to offer a word of encouragement to authors: You have to feel called to the message of your book enough that you want people to get that message. When you get to that place, your passion goes through the roof, and then the other stuff happens.

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