These plagiarism quotes will inspire you. Plagiarism, to use the words or ideas of another person as if they were your own words or ideas or the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging plagiarism quotes, plagiarism sayings, and plagiarism proverbs.
Best Plagiarism Quotes
- “If you steal from one author it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many it’s research.” ~ Wilson Mizner
- “I think the line between “inspiration” and “plagiarism” is often so thin, that you risk falling into the latter one.” ~ Ivan Tverdovsky
- “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” ~ Albert Einstein
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“Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.” ~ Lionel Trilling
- “Originality is nothing but judicious plagiarism.” ~ Voltaire
- “It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing-and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite – that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.” ~ Mark Twain
- “If I did what has already been done, I would be a plagiarist and would consider myself unworthy; so I do something different and people call me a scoundrel. I’d rather be a scoundrel than a plagiarist!” ~ Paul Gauguin
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“I don’t think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow.” ~ B. B. King
- “Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from.” ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- “Plagiarism saves time.” ~ Stephen Hawking
- “Most plagiarists, like the drone, have neither taste to select, industry to acquire, nor skill to improve, but impudently pilfer the honey ready prepared, from the hive.” ~ Charles Caleb Colton
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“What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.” ~ William Ralph Inge
- “Stealing from one author is plagiarism; from many authors, research.” ~ Walter Moers
- “Of course, your ideas can be stolen… I used to think it was immoral; now I think of it as a compliment… Ultimately, an idea isn’t yours; it’s only your take on something.” ~ Peter Wolf
- “Most authors steal their works, or buy.” ~ Alexander Pope
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“Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.” ~ Jonathan Swift
- “Originality is undetected plagiarism.” ~ William Ralph Inge
- “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.” ~ T. S. Eliot
- “After some time passed in studying – and even imitating – the works of others, I would recommend the student to endeavor to be original, and to remember that originality should not be undiscovered plagiarism.” ~ Henry Peach Robinson
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“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.” ~ Charles Caleb Colton
- “Some brains are barren grounds, that will not bring seed or fruit forth unless they are well manured with the old wit which is raked from other writers and speakers.” ~ Margaret Cavendish
- “Art is either plagiarism or revolution.” ~ Paul Gauguin
- “The bees pillage the flowers here and there but they make honey of them which is all their own; it is no longer thyme or Marjolaine: so the pieces borrowed from others he will transform and mix up into a work all his own.” ~ Michel de Montaigne
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“plagiarism, n. A literary coincidence compounded of a discreditable priority and an honorable subsequence.” ~ Ambrose Bierce
- “Genius Borrows nobly.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.” ~ Steven Wright
- “Clever people can copy the handwriting of an artist – it’s like forging a person’s signature.” ~ Henry Moore
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“Stealing things is a glorious occupation, particularly in the art world.” ~ Malcolm Mclaren
- “He invades authors like a monarch, and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him.” ~ John Dryden
- “The immature artist imitates. The mature artist steals.” ~ Lionel Trilling
- “I’ve been imitated so well I’ve heard people copy my mistakes.” ~ Jimi Hendrix
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“What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.” ~ Mark Twain
- “I could tell you which writer’s rhythms I am imitating. It’s not exactly plagiarism, it’s falling in love with good language and trying to imitate it.” ~ Charles Kuralt
- “About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.” ~ Josh Billings
- “The Plagiarism of orators is the art, or an ingenious and easy mode, which some adroitly employ to change, or disguise, all sorts of speeches of their own composition, or that of other authors, for their pleasure, or their utility; in such a manner that it becomes impossible even for the author himself to recognize his own work, his own genius, and his own style, so skilfully shall the whole be disguised.” ~ Isaac D’Israeli
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“All work and no plagiarism makes for dull sermons!” ~ Henry Ward Beecher
- “Amongst so many borrowed things, am glad if I can steal one, disguising and altering it for some new service.” ~ Michel de Montaigne
- “Anticipatory plagiarism occurs when someone steals your original idea and publishes it a hundred years before you were born.” ~ Robert K. Merton
- “Self-plagiarism is style.” ~ Alfred Hitchcock
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“Some people try to paint in my style. Some simply sell pirated copies of my work. Some claim to be my publisher or agent or even my exclusive representative when they are not.” ~ LeRoy Neiman
- “Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation.” ~ Benjamin Disraeli
- “I did not steal other people’s work! I may have appropriated some styles, but I did not steal. My work is full… of homages to everyone in my medium – not theft!” ~ Nick Simmons
- “The human plagiarism which is most difficult to avoid, for individuals… is the plagiarism of ourselves.” ~ Marcel Proust , Avoid plagiarism quotes
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“Plagiarism is basic to all culture” ~ Pete Seeger
- “Plagiarize!
Plagiarize,
Let no one else’s work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don’t shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize…
Only be sure always to call it please “research”.” ~ Tom Lehrer - “It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “As for piracy, I love to be pirated. It is the greatest compliment an author can have. The wholesale piracy of Democracy was the single real triumph of my life. Anyone may steal what he likes from me.” ~ Henry Adams
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“For such kind of borrowing as this, if it be not bettered by the borrowers, among good authors is accounted Plagiarè.” ~ John Milton
- “Who to patch up his fame, or fill his purse, Still pilfers wretched plans, and makes them worse; Like gypsies, lest the stolen brat be known, Defacing first, then claiming for his own.” ~ Charles Churchill
- “Take the whole range of imaginative literature, and we are all wholesale borrowers. In every matter that relates to invention, to use, or beauty or form, we are borrowers.” ~ Wendell Phillips
- “No, generally I think influence is used as a nice word for plagiarism.” ~ Gilbert Gottfried
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“When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.” ~ Anatole France
- “All artists are protected by copyright… and we should be the first to respect copyright.” ~ Billy Cannon
- “Anything that is not autobiography is plagiarism.” ~ Pedro Almodovar
- “Steal! to be sure they may; and, egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children,-disfigure them to make ’em pass for their own.” ~ Richard Brinsley Sheridan
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“I recover my property wherever I find it.” ~ Moliere
- “And for the citation of so many authors, ’tis the easiest thing in nature. Find out one of these books with an alphabetical index, and without any further ceremony, remove it verbatim into your own… there are fools enough to be thus drawn into an opinion of the work; at least, such a flourishing train of attendants will give your book a fashionable air, and recommend it for sale.” ~ Miguel de Cervantes
- “Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.” ~ Guy Debord
- “I see my work plagiarized in gardening programs and decorating programs and car adverts, and I suppose I have to accept that’s just the way art gets assimilated into culture.” ~ Andy Goldsworthy
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“Do something others will have the desire to plagiarize but will find difficult to do.” ~ Robert Genn
- “The kernel, the soul – let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances – is plagiarism.” ~ Jonathan Lethem
- “The kernel, the soul let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, 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 garner 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 caliber and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing.” ~ Mark Twain
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“The only “ism” Hollywood believes in is plagiarism.” ~ Dorothy Parker
- “Goethe said there would be little left of him if he were to discard what he owed to others.” ~ Charlotte Saunders Cushman
- “Most writers steal a good thing when they can, and when ‘Tis safely got ‘Tis worth the winning. The worst of ‘t is we now and then detect em, they ever dream that we suspect em.” ~ Bryan Procter
