I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.
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.
You came from a source.
Leader. Ship. The word 'ship' is hidden inside the word 'leadership,' as its... derivation.
Nobody really invents anything that hasn't been done before.
Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.
The reason the gifted students of the world like Khan Academy is because we don't say, 'Memorize this formula,' but say, 'Let's try to derive it from core principles,' or, 'I forgot my trig identity, so I'm going to just try to prove this to you.'
We all borrow and steal and copy from each other, and that's the way I think people get inspired.
With all deference to Chairman Mao and other authors whose quotations derive from longer works, it seemed that I was becoming the world's first writer of self-contained ready-made quotations.
All too often, when creative people pick out someone else's creative work as an inspiration, what they end up with is very, very far from the original.
What do you call that when you add '-ism' on the end of a word? What is that process? 'Wordism'? Something like that, yeah.
I will pause to consider this eternity from which the subsequent ones derive.
I would say that all traditional philosophies up to and including Marxism have tried to derive the 'ought' from the 'is.' My point of view is that this is impossible; this is a farce.
It would be most wholesome if for at least twenty years art historians were forbidden to refer to any derivations. If they were not allowed to account for a work of art mainly by tracing where it comes from, they would have to deal with it in and by itself--which is what they are most needed for.
If mutual respect does derive from unilateral respect, it does so by opposition.
