“Stealing from one author is plagiarism; from many authors, research.”

Source: The City of Dreaming Books

Last update July 23, 2025. History

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Do you have more details about the quote "Stealing from one author is plagiarism; from many authors, research." by Walter Moers?
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Walter Moers 13
German comic creator and author 1957

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“When you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research.”

Wilson Mizner (1876–1933) American writer

Quoted in Alva Johnston's The Legendary Mizners (1953, Farrar Straus and Young, New York, chapter 4, p 66) and Bartlett's, 1992, p. 631.
Also quoted as If you copy from one author, it's plagiarism. If you copy from two, it's research by Stuart B. McIver in Dreamers, Schemers and Scalawags.
Epigrams

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“I've taken stuff from people, too. You know though, if you steal from one person, you're just a thief. But if you steal from everyone, that's research.”

Tony Bennett (1926) American singer

[Dino, Scatena, The new cool cat on the block, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/15/1081998284897.html?from=storyrhs, Sydney Morning Herald, 2004-04-16, 2006-11-10]
Take-off on an aphorism attributed to Wilson Mizner, in response to Michael Bublé's acknowledgment of having "stolen stuff" from Bennett.

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“Hawkesworth said of Johnson, "You have a memory that would convict any author of plagiarism in any court of literature in the world."”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Kearsley, 600
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Johnsoniana

“Philosophy establishes itself as a discourse by opposition to the authority of received opinion, especially the opinions sedimented as cult and as law. Philosophy puts into question the authority of what has been handed down. It is not just that there is a critique of philosophic authorities; rather, philosophy appears to be characterized by rejection of intellectual authority as such. How is philosophy to distinguish, then, a permissible authority from those many impermissible authorities which it must reject if it is to survive?
Perhaps it would be better to avoid the quandary altogether by dismissing authority in order to consider only the "content" of the claims under consideration, regardless of their pretensions. The dismissal fails for at least two reasons. The first is that there are no claims in philosophic texts that are wholly free at least from the implicit constructions of authority. If criticism takes only the content, then it ends up with something other than the texts that have constituted the discourse of philosophy. There is no Platonic "theory of Forms" dissociable from the Platonic pedagogy, that is, from the teaching authority of the Platonic Socrates. The second reason for not being able to dismiss authority altogether is that the very criticism that wants to look only at contents will impose itself as an authority in its choice of procedure. One will still have authority, but an authority that refuses to raise any question about authority.
Perhaps the question about legitimate authority could be avoided, again, by replying that the obvious criterion for claims in philosophy is the truth. The assumption here is that access to the truth is had entirely apart from the authority of philosophical traditions. Yet it is a biographical fact that one is brought into philosophy by education. First principles are learned most often not by simple observation or by the natural light of reason, but under the tutelage of some authoritative tradition.”

Authority and persuasion in philosophy (1985)

Anthony Trollope photo

“Take away from English authors their copyrights, and you would very soon take away from England her authors.”

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) English novelist (1815-1882)

Source: An Autobiography (1883), Ch. 6

Tom Lehrer photo
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“I am amazed that Roli Books should publish such thinly disguised plagiarism, and allow the author to hide in a cavalier manner behind a nom-de-plume.”

Mark Tully (1935) British journalist

The book is clearly modelled on my career, even down to the name of the main character. That character's journalism is abysmal, and his views on Hindutva and Hinduism do not in any way reflect mine. I would disagree with them profoundly.
On the controversy created in a thinly-disguised novel which portrays him as a heartless philanderer and supporter of fanatics.
Source: Dean Nelson, " Former BBC correspondent Sir Mark Tully attacked in novel http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/7552715/Former-BBC-correspondent-Sir-Mark-Tully-attacked-in-novel.html," in The Telegraph, 5 April 2010

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“I have committed many sins in my life. But stealing money from the government, from the people, is not one of them.”

Ferdinand Marcos (1917–1989) former President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986

in an interview on ABC
1965

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“If one thinks that there is another authority and force apart from the Creator, he is committing a sin.”

Yehuda Ashlag (1886–1954) Orthodox Jewish Rabbi and Kabbalist

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