In many of the passionate discussions of "intellectual property" and the evils of impinging
on someone else's creativity, one can sometimes
get the impression that artists are united and unanimous on this burning issue.
This is not true.
“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal;
bad poets deface what they take, and good poets
make it into something better, or at least something
different.
The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.”
— T.S. Eliot
“It’s not where you take things from—
it’s where you take them to.”
— Jean-Luc Godard
“If you have one person you’re influenced by, everyone will say you’re the next whoever.
But if you rip off a hundred people, everyone
will say you’re so original!” — Gary Panter
“Plagiarism is basic to all culture.”
— Pete Seeger
“Those who do not want to imitate anything,
produce nothing.”
— Salvador Dali
“You can’t steal a gift. Bird [Charlie Parker] gave the world his music, and if you can hear it you can have it.”
— Dizzy Gillespie
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