Borrowed Ideas Quotes

The actual and valuable material of all human utterances —is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

Borrowed thoughts, like borrowed money, only show the poverty of the borrower.

I rip off of every movie and TV show I've ever seen in my life.

God creates, I do not create. I assemble and I steal everywhere to do it - from what I see, from what the dancers can do, from what others do.

And one might therefore say of me that in this book I have only made up a bunch of other people's flowers, and that of my own I have only provided the string that ties them together.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don't like their rules, whose would you use?

I love taking on other people's words. They are much more interesting to me than my own.

As by some might be saide of me: that here I have but gathered a nosegay of strange floures, and have put nothing of mine unto it, but the thred to binde them. Certes, I have given unto publike opinion, that these borrowed ornaments accompany me; but I meane not they should cover or hide me.

I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that tied them together.

Every so often in life, you encounter a brilliant idea. Usually, at least in my case, it's somebody else's idea.

Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients.

The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.

I do know there's a lot of music where Led Zeppelin has been leant on. We didn't do anything about it. And I wouldn't want to, either.

Our best thoughts come from others.

A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.

When a man ain't got no ideas of his own, he'd ought to be kind o' careful who he borrows 'em from.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book.

Everything all of us do is stolen from somebody.

All the poets are indebted more or less to those who have gone before them; even Homer's originality has been questioned, and Virgil owes almost as much to Theocritus, in his Pastorals, as to Homer, in his Heroics; and if our own countryman, Milton, has soared above both Homer and Virgil, it is because he has stolen some feathers from their wings.

I quote others only in order the better to express myself.

Stale is stale and borrowed is borrowed, no matter how original your models may have been.

I have used the philosophers' ideas for my own private literary purposes, but I don't think that I'm a thinker. I suppose that my thinking has been done for me by Berkeley, by Hume, by Schopenhauer, by Mauthner perhaps.

Borrowed eloquence, if it contains as good stuff, is as good as own eloquence

A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.