Molly Ivins Quotes

There is probably some long-standing "rule" among writers, journalists, and other word-mongers that says: "When you start stealing from your own work you're in bad trouble." And it may be true.

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

Quotation is a method of appropriation which is invincible, I think. It's not a procedure which displeases me, contrary to recycling.

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

Self-plagiarism is style.

A lot of art and visual crafts are based on appropriating things.

Mr. Fitzgerald, I believe that is how he spells his name, seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.

When a well-known creative person such as me is perceived to have created a knockoff of my own previous work, such a perception is a mortal blow to my reputation as a creative person.

I think that all journalists, specifically print journalists, have a responsibility to educate the public. When you handle a culture's intellectual property, like journalists do, you have a responsibility not to tear it down, but to raise it up. The depiction of rap and of hip-hop culture in the media, I think, is one that needs more of a responsible approach from journalists.

We prefer to think that the absence of inverted commas guarantees the originality of a thought, whereas it may be merely that the utterer has forgotten its source.

The human plagiarism which is most difficult to avoid, for individuals... is the plagiarism of ourselves.

I think that if you feel imaginatively towards a subject, you really shouldn't do it in a journalistic context, because then you're just fabricating, and that's crazy.

I've been thinking... Maybe you're a mockingbird... Mockingbirds imitate the songs of other birds... No, I've never heard of any copyright problems.

As to the rest, I am no more guilty of imitating 'real life' than'real life' is responsible for plagiarizing me.

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.

I try not to steal from myself, but the modalities create similarities.

You're going to run into a great deal of opinions. I think that's just fertile ground for us. What else would you want to write a show about than something that is that much of a pressure cooker, that has that much influence and impact? We're going to run into a lot of different opinions, but it's inspiring to me that newsmen and newswomen have reached out and said how thrilled they are with what we're doing.

PLAGIARIZE, v. To take the thought or style of another writer whom one has never, never read.

I think there are a lot of great journalists out there. I don't find much fault in the journalist in general; I think everybody would like to break a good story.

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.

Everyone plagiarizes me. Ever since I wrote my autobiography.

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.

The only “ism” Hollywood believes in is plagiarism.

I have myself always been terrified of plagiarism - of being accused of it, that is. Every writer is a thief, though some of us are more clever than others at disguising our robberies. The reason writers are such slow readers is that we are ceaselessly searching for things we can steal and then pass off as our own: a natty bit of syntax, a seamless transition, a metaphor that jumps to its target like an arrow shot from an aluminum crossbow.

Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from, as pickpockets are observed commonly to walk with their hands in their breeches' pockets.