Plagiarism Quotes

“All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorms room. Or maybe they'd realized I got my Essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.”
― Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood

“I've been imitated so well I've heard people copy my mistakes.”
― Jimi Hendrix

“When you have wit of your own, it's a pleasure to credit other people for theirs.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.”
― Anatole France

“To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.”
― Steven Wright

“As a convinced atheist, I ought to agree with Voltaire that Judaism is not just one more religion, but in its way the root of religious evil. Without the stern, joyless rabbis and their 613 dour prohibitions, we might have avoided the whole nightmare of the Old Testament, and the brutal, crude wrenching of that into prophecy-derived Christianity, and the later plagiarism and mutation of Judaism and Christianity into the various rival forms of Islam. Much of the time, I do concur with Voltaire, but not without acknowledging that Judaism is dialectical. There is, after all, a specifically Jewish version of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, with a specifically Jewish name—the Haskalah—for itself. The term derives from the word for 'mind' or 'intellect,' and it is naturally associated with ethics rather than rituals, life rather than prohibitions, and assimilation over 'exile' or 'return.' It's everlastingly linked to the name of the great German teacher Moses Mendelssohn, one of those conspicuous Jewish hunchbacks who so upset and embarrassed Isaiah Berlin. (The other way to upset or embarrass Berlin, I found, was to mention that he himself was a cousin of Menachem Schneerson, the 'messianic' Lubavitcher rebbe.) However, even pre-enlightenment Judaism forces its adherents to study and think, it reluctantly teaches them what others think, and it may even teach them how to think also.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky.
In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics:
Plagiarize!

Plagiarize!
Let no one else's work evade your eyes!
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes!
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize -
Only be sure always to call it please 'research'."

[Lobachevsky]”
― Tom Lehrer

“Anticipatory plagiarism occurs when someone steals your original idea and publishes it a hundred years before you were born.”
― Robert Merton

“People seldom improve when they have no model but themselves to copy after.”
― Oliver Goldsmith

“Plagiarism is the fear of a blank page.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism cannot own up to its heavily derivative nature, it must enforce originality on the level of the sentence.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures

“I get a lot of big ideas, and occasionally I actually come up with one myself.”
― Bauvard, Some Inspiration for the Overenthusiastic

“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.”
― Mark Twain

“A wise man will always allow a fool to rob him of ideas without yelling “Thief.”
If he is wise he has not been impoverished.
Nor has the fool been enriched.
The thief flatters us by stealing.
We flatter him by complaining.”
― Ben Hecht, A Child of the Century

“God loves the plagiarist. And so it is written, 'God created humankind in His image, in the image of God He created them." God is the original plagiarizer. With a lack of reasonable sources from which to filch - man created in the image of what? the animals? - the creation of man was an act of reflexive plagiarizing; God looted the mirror. When we plagiarize, we are likewise creating in the image and participating in the completion of Creation.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation”
― Benjamin Disraeli

“Muslims must be warned that plagiarists and pretenders as well as ignorant imitators affect great mischief by debasing values, imposing upon the ignorant, and encouraging the rise of mediocrity. The appropriate original ideas for hasty implementation and make false claims for themselves. Original ideas cannot be implemented when vulgarized; on the contrary, what is praiseworthy in them will turn out to become blameworthy, and their rejection will follow with the dissatisfaction that will emerge. So in this way authentic and creative intellectual effort will continually be sabotaged. It is not surprising that the situation arising out of the loss of adab also provides the breeding ground for the emergence of extremists who make ignorance their capital.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism

“Nachahmung ist die aufrichtigste Form der Schmeichelei.”
― Charles Caleb Colton

“You can use a telescope to peep through windows or gaze at the stars, the former makes you a creep, the latter makes you a scientist - the same is with AI, you can use AI to undress people or as an additional tool in your broader mission.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“How Not to Use AI (Sonnet 2651-2652)

Every artist has a central art,
an art that defines their life,
keep that art pure and human,
till the day you die.

The medium may change with time,
but the material must be human.
I repeat, AI may assist humanity,
but not substitute humanity.

Humans are not much bright to begin with,
with all our jungle biases and prejudices,
and leaning heavily on generative ai,
would only turn society into meatmarket.

AI is not the problem, mindlessness is,
in fact, it's stupid not to make use of
a marvelous new instrument out of rigidity,
but you must draw a clear line between
human originality and ai assistance.

For example, I literally cannot remember when
was the last time I picked up a physical pen,
as all my books are written on a computer.

And at some point, I might even consider
using AI for minor bookcover edits,
not generate the cover mark you,
but strictly for tweaks of the images.

I won't even let your little bards and byrons
anywhere near my writing, let alone algorithms.
I am Naskar, the canon is Naskar, it'll remain Naskar,
till the universe collapses and the next one begins.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“Normalizing Case Specific AI Use
(Naskaristana 2663-2666)

Don't waste your time on the dilemma of,
to use or not to use ai, ask instead,
how can you use ai in your particular field,
without compromising your integrity!

It's not about avoiding ai,
it's about delegating menial tasks to ai -
fire, steam, electricity, internet, ai, these
are all tools, sooner or later you will adopt it,
and this comes from a person whose literature
was heisted without consent to train algorithms, among many other living writers.

Sure, unlike electricity and internet,
the origin of gen-ai is downright dubious,
so much so that even bombing these ai companies
would not be unjustified, just like bombing america
would be a great humanitarian initiative, but that
won't solve the exploitation problem in the long run -

so we'd have to find meaningful alternatives
to deal with such contraptions of heinous origins,
instead of just freaking out,
whether it's algorithm or america.

AI slop is still slop,
American history is still a crimescene,
therefore we have to deslopify ai,
and disinfect america of its
foundational knack for terrorism.

Also, one more thing, ai is a radically new territory,
even the makers of ai don't know what they're doing,
so don't expect to figure out everything overnight,
don't be too hard on yourself pressured by hypocrites;

the idea is not to outsource your ideas,
whether to ai or to hypocritical primates,
so take your time, and figure out your own
ethics of ai in case specific context.

Use ai to be more meaningful than productive -
for example, bring inspiring figures to life,
and make them have discourse with each other,
but always maintain their original texts.

Or like I recently (March, 2026) used ai to produce a few audio materials, based on some of the sonnets, these tracks sound like music but they are not, even though the lyrics are mine, it's not music until I pick up the guitar and sing myself, or some real musician does; I see these ai audio tracks as accessibility extensions - in fact, accessibility could be the greatest boon of ai.

The canon is the art, the audios are just more courier,
both the ai tracks and my own voice recordings.

Main point is this:
music without musician is not music,
poetry without poet is not poetry,
art without artist is not art,
simulation without experience is delusion.

You can 3d print furniture,
but you cannot 3d print art -
and alas, only a true artist
can know what this means!”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“The idea is not to outsource your ideas, so take your time, and figure out your own ethics of ai in case specific context.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“Don't waste your time on the dilemma of, to use or not to use ai, ask instead, how can you use ai in your particular field, without compromising your integrity!

It's not about avoiding ai, it's about delegating menial tasks to ai - fire, steam, electricity, internet, ai, these are all tools, sooner or later you will adopt it, and this comes from a person whose literature was heisted without consent to train algorithms, among many other living writers.

AI is a radically new territory, even the makers of ai don't know what they're doing, so don't expect to figure out everything overnight, don't be too hard on yourself pressured by hypocrites;

the idea is not to outsource your ideas, whether to ai or to hypocritical primates, so take your time, and figure out your own ethics of ai in case specific context.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“AI slop is still slop, therefore we have to deslopify ai - use ai to be more meaningful than productive.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“Consciousness automated is consciousness muted, academia prompted is academia infected.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“Vegetables with limbs (Sonnet 2824)

Now more than ever, if the human race
stops doing art, writing literature,
writing philosophy, poetry, code,
writing songs, music and mathematics, because
apparently generative ai can do all of that,
soon indistinguishable from the human article,

then this is the exact moment in history
when the human brain, particularly
the prefrontal cortex, starts to shrink,
rendering our species into vegetable with limbs.

Generative AI is going to have
the biggest impact on brain evolution,
since primitive humans learnt
to harness fire, for better or worse.

I'm not asking you to avoid ai altogether,
even if you try you cannot, any more than
you can refuse internet or electricity,
because, more and more, ai is going to infiltrate
every aspect of the global tech infrastructure -

all I'm saying is, get your priorities straight,
no matter what you do in any other aspect of life,
keep the central art of your life untouched by ai,
use ai as assistant, not as ghostwriter.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tierra Carta: Naskar Charter of Earth

“Now more than ever, if the human race stops doing art, writing literature, writing philosophy, poetry, code, writing songs, music and mathematics, because apparently generative ai can do all of that, soon indistinguishable from the human article, then this is the exact moment in history when the human brain, particularly the prefrontal cortex, starts to shrink, rendering our species into vegetable with limbs.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tierra Carta: Naskar Charter of Earth

“Generative AI is going to have the biggest impact on brain evolution, since primitive humans learnt to harness fire, for better or worse.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tierra Carta: Naskar Charter of Earth

“Use ai as assistant, not as ghostwriter.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tierra Carta: Naskar Charter of Earth