Tom Lehrer Quotes

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 recognise his own work, his own genius, and his own style, so skilfully shall the whole be disguised.

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

No, generally I think influence is used as a nice word for plagiarism.

Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation.

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

Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from.

I know that charges of plagiarism are serious.

In one word he told me the secret of success in mathematics: plagiarize; only be sure always to call it . . . research.

plagiarism, n. A literary coincidence compounded of a discreditable priority and an honorable subsequence.

Plagiarism is always the biggest thing in Hollywood.

Plagiarism has been around far longer than the Internet. In fact, I had a poem published in 'Seventeen' magazine when I was 15 years old. About a year later I was informed that there was a girl who used that same poem to win a statewide poetry competition in Alabama. It took months for people to put together that this had happened.

Taking something from one man and making it worse is plagiarism.

Authors hide their big thefts by putting small ones between quotation marks.

All this is labour which never meets the eye.... But too open and generous a revelation of the chapter and the page of the original quoted, has often proved detrimental to the legitimate honours of the quoter. They are unfairly appropriated by the next comer; the quoter is never quoted, but the authority he has afforded is produced by his successor with the air of an original research.

Most authors steal their works, or buy.

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

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 farther 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.

If you steal from one book you are condemned as a plagiarist, but if you steal from ten books you are considered a scholar, and if you steal from thirty or forty books, a distinguished scholar.

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

When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.

Originality is undetected plagiarism.

I don't steal stories. If I'm a plagiarist, so is Hitchcock. And Tolkien. And Shakespeare.

In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment.

Too afraid of plagiarising someone, so I stopped reading fiction in 1981.

Blake is damned good to steal from.