“Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”

Source: Steve Jobs

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Do you have more details about the quote "Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing grea…" by Walter Isaacson?
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Walter Isaacson 23
American writer and biographer 1952

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Steve Jobs photo

“We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

Triumph of the Nerds (1996)
1990s

Steve Jobs photo

“Good artists copy; great artists steal.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

This is a favorite phrase of Jobs, but he is (mis)quoting Pablo Picasso. "Lesser artists borrow; great artists steal" is similarly attributed to Igor Stravinsky, but both sayings may well originate in T. S. Eliot's dictum http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Wood/Philip_Massinger: "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn."
Misattributed

Pablo Picasso photo

“Good artists copy, great artists steal.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Compare: "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal." T. S. Eliot, in Philip Massinger, in The Sacred Wood (1920)
Disputed

Pablo Picasso photo

“Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Compare: "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal." T. S. Eliot, in Philip Massinger, in The Sacred Wood (1920)
Disputed
Variant: Good artists copy, great artists steal.

Quentin Tarantino photo
Aaron Swartz photo

“The law about what is stealing is very clear. Stealing is taking something away from someone so they cannot use it. There’s no way that making a copy of something is stealing under that definition.”

Aaron Swartz (1986–2013) computer programmer and internet-political activist

UTI interview (2004)
Context: The law about what is stealing is very clear. Stealing is taking something away from someone so they cannot use it. There’s no way that making a copy of something is stealing under that definition.
If you make a copy of something, you’ll be prosecuted for copyright infringement or something similar — not larceny (the legal term for stealing). Stealing, like piracy and intellectual property, is another one of those terms cooked up to make us think of intellectual works the same way we think of physical items. But the two are very different.
You can’t just punish people because they took away a “potential sale”. Earthquakes take away potential sales, as do libraries and rental stores and negative reviews. Competitors also take away potential sales.

Gertrude Stein photo
George Moore (novelist) photo

“A great artist is always before his time or behind it.”

George Moore (novelist) (1852–1933) Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist

Source: As quoted in Conversations with George Moore (1929) by Geraint Goodwin, p. 123

Alfred de Musset photo

“Great artists have no country.”

L’Orfèvre, Lorenzaccio (1834).

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