Plagiarism Quotes (10 quotes)
Copy from one, it’s plagiarism; copy from two, it’s research.
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Copying extensively from one source is plagiarism; copying extensively from several is research.
N. E. Renton, Compendium of Good Writing: A Plain English Guide (2007), 113.
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.
Epigraph for chapter 'Quotation and Originality', in Letters and Social Aims (1875, 1917), 176.
I publish this Essay in its present imperfect state, in order to prevent the furacious attempts of the prowling plagiary, and the insidious pretender to chymistry, from arrogating to themselves, and assuming my invention, in plundering silence: for there are those, who, if they can not be chymical, never fail by stratagem, and mechanical means, to deprive industry of the fruits, and fame of her labours.
Preface to An Essay on Combustion with a View to a New Art of Dyeing and Painting (1794), vii-viii.
Mariotte took everything from me, … as can attest those of the Academy, M. du Hamel, M. Gallois, and the registers. [He took] the machine, the experiment on the rebound of glass balls, the experiment of one or more balls pushed together against of line of equal balls, the theorems that I had published. He should have mentioned me. I told him that one day, and he could not respond.
Written in a sketch of an introduction to a treatise on impact never completed. As quoted in Charles Coulston Gillespie (ed.), Michael S. Mahoney, 'Marriote, Edme', Dictionary of Scientific Biogrgaphy (1974), Vol. 9, 115, citing Christiaan Huygens, 'De moto corporum ex percussione', collected in Oeuvers, Vol. 16, (1929), 209. The theorems were given parenthetically as in Philisophical Transactions (1668) and Journal des Sçavans (1669). Through correspondence, Huygens and Mariotte knew of each others’ work. Huygens felt slighted that Mariotte gave no mention of him as a source in a paper written by Mariotte on the same subject. Whether actual plagiarism or merely oversight remains open.
No one can take from us the joy of the first becoming aware of something, the so-called discovery. But if we also demand the honor, it can be utterly spoiled for us, for we are usually not the first. What does discovery mean, and who can say that he has discovered this or that? After all it’s pure idiocy to brag about priority; for it’s simply unconscious conceit, not to admit frankly that one is a plagiarist.
Epigraph to Lancelot Law Whyte, The Unconscious before Freud (1960).
Professor Cayley has since informed me that the theorem about whose origin I was in doubt, will be found in Schläfli’s De Eliminatione. This is not the first unconscious plagiarism I have been guilty of towards this eminent man whose friendship I am proud to claim. A more glaring case occurs in a note by me in the Comptes Rendus, on the twenty-seven straight lines of cubic surfaces, where I believe I have followed (like one walking in his sleep), down to the very nomenclature and notation, the substance of a portion of a paper inserted by Schlafli in the Mathematical Journal, which bears my name as one of the editors upon the face.
In Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (1864), 642.
To learn the language of art, copy for ever is my rule.
Marginal note (c. 1808) written on table of contents page in his copy of The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1798), beside “Much copying discountenanced”. As given in William Blake, Edwin John Ellis (ed.) and William Butler Yeats (ed.), The Works of William Blake (1893), Vol. 2, 319.
When you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research.
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Wit must grow like Fingers. If it be taken from others, ’tis like Plums stuck upon black Thorns; there they are for a while, but they come to nothing.
In John Selden, Richard Milward (ed.), 'Wit', Table-Talk of John Selden (1689), 60.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
