Steal Quotes (14 quotes)
~~[Attributed]~~ A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
As quoted, without citation, in William Joseph Grace, Art of Communicating Ideas (1952), 389. Sadly, much searching produces no primary source. Can you help?
~~[Dubious]~~ A plagiarist steals from one person. A true artist steals from everybody.
Seen feral on the web, but never with source citation. Webmaster has not yet found any primary source, and regards the quote as spurious. Compare the believed authentic quote, “When there's anything to steal, I steal,” See the Pablo Picasso Quotes page on this site.
~~[Unverified]~~ I don’t care that they stole my idea. I care that they don’t have any of their own.
Webmaster has not, yet, found an authentic primary source for this quote. Can you help? This has been circulated around the web, copied into books, and never to be found with a citation. It may be misattributed from some other speaker. Or it may be a paraphrase of a longer statement by Tesla. Meanwhile, Webmaster is very dubious, and suggests it is better attributed to Anonymous until a source can be paired with it.
Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.
As quoted, without citation, in Robert Slater, Portraits in Silicon (1987), 88. In reply to a student expressing concern that his own ideas might be stolen before he had published his own thesis. Also seen as “Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats,” in Eric A. Weiss, A Computer Science Reader: Selections from ABACUS (1988), 404. (The selections were published in the first three-and-a-half years of ABACUS, a quarterly journal for computing professionals.)
Examine Venus and the Moon
Who stole a thimble or a spoon.
Who stole a thimble or a spoon.
From poem 'Hudibras' (1684), Line 591. In Hudibras: In Three Parts, Written in the Time of the Late Wars (1806), 119.
I am told that the wall paintings which we had the happiness of admiring in all their beauty and freshness [in the chapel she discovered at Abu Simbel] are already much injured. Such is the fate of every Egyptian monument, great or small. The tourist carves it over with names and dates, and in some instances with caricatures. The student of Egyptology, by taking wet paper “squeezes” sponges away every vestige of the original colour. The “Collector” buys and carries off everything of value that he can, and the Arab steals it for him. The work of destruction, meanwhile goes on apace. The Museums of Berlin, of Turin, of Florence are rich in spoils which tell their lamentable tale. When science leads the way, is it wonderful that ignorance should follow?
Quoted in Margaret S. Drower, The Early Years, in T.G.H. James, (ed.), Excavating in Egypt: The Egypt Exploration Society, 1882-1982 (1982), 10. As cited in Wendy M.K. Shaw, Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire (2003), 37. Also quoted in Margaret S. Drower, Flinders Petrie: A Life in Archaeology (1995), 57.
If any woman were to hang a man for stealing her picture, although it were set in gold, it would be a new case in law; but, if he carried off the setting, and left the portrait, I would not answer for his safety.
Reflection 557, in Lacon: or Many things in Few Words; Addressed to Those Who Think (1820), 234.
Like the furtive collectors of stolen art, we [cell biologists] are forced to be lonely admirers of spectacular architecture, exquisite symmetry, dramas of violence and death, mobility, self-sacrifice and, yes, rococo sex.
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The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with facts for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life. What would we not give to make it possible for us to steal a look at a book that will serve primary schools in a hundred years?
In Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse (1846), Preface, 13. From the original French, “Le simple écolier sait maintenant des vérités pour lesquelles Archimède eût sacrifié sa vie. Que ne donnerions-nous pas pour qu’il nous fût possible de jeter un coup d’œil furtif sur tel livre qui servira aux écoles primaires dans cent ans?”
They tend to be suspicious, bristly, paranoid-type people with huge egos they push around like some elephantiasis victim with his distended testicles in a wheelbarrow terrified no doubt that some skulking ingrate of a clone student will sneak into his very brain and steal his genius work.
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What is it to see, in an Eagle glide
Which fills a human heart with so much pride?
Is it that it soars effortless above the Earth
That steals us from our own limits & dearth?
Trapped in our seas of befuddling sludge
We try and try but cannot budge.
And then to see a mortal; with such ease take wing
Up in a breeze that makes our failing spirits sing?
Do we, vicarious birds, search in it our childishness -
When we too were young & yearned in heart to fly?
Taking flights of fancy through adolescent nights
Listening little, heeding less, knowing not why?
From its highest perch in the forest of snow
Majestic - the Eagle soars alone.
Riding thermals, lording clouds
Till dropping silent from the sky as a stone
But we, so quick and ready to fold
Give up our wings at the whiff of age
Losing years, cursing time, wasting spirit
Living out entire lives in futile rage!
Which fills a human heart with so much pride?
Is it that it soars effortless above the Earth
That steals us from our own limits & dearth?
Trapped in our seas of befuddling sludge
We try and try but cannot budge.
And then to see a mortal; with such ease take wing
Up in a breeze that makes our failing spirits sing?
Do we, vicarious birds, search in it our childishness -
When we too were young & yearned in heart to fly?
Taking flights of fancy through adolescent nights
Listening little, heeding less, knowing not why?
From its highest perch in the forest of snow
Majestic - the Eagle soars alone.
Riding thermals, lording clouds
Till dropping silent from the sky as a stone
But we, so quick and ready to fold
Give up our wings at the whiff of age
Losing years, cursing time, wasting spirit
Living out entire lives in futile rage!
…...
When I was eight, I played Little League. I was on first; I stole third; I went straight across. Earlier that week, I learned that the shortest distance between two points was a direct line. I took advantage of that knowledge.
In Comic Relief (1996).
When there’s anything to steal, I steal.
As quoted in Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso (1964), 285. Gilot was a close companion of Picasso.
When you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research.
…...
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) -- 
