Quotes about copying
page 4

“It is all very well for intellectuals in their air-conditioned offices to bemoan the unbelievable impact of either mean-spirited or silly rumours in the genesis of communal riots among the common folk. But in this instance, in their own reports on and analysis of communal violence, factual data were just as shamelessly replaced with invention, rumours and conspiracy theories. In this respect, religious extremists such as the Shahi Imam have behaved themselves better than the secularist campaigners who pose as the guardians of modernity and the scientific temper. Arundhati Roy risked the international fame she so clearly cherishes by going public with blatant lies about atrocities against named Gujarati Muslim women who turned out to be either non-existent or abroad at the time of the riots. Perhaps a fiction writer can afford this, but the news media with their deontology of accuracy and objectivity made themselves guilty of similar howlers. Internationally influential media like the Washington Post copied from an Islamist website rumours about Hindu provocations behind the Godhra carnage, falsely claiming a Gujarati journalist as source, and never publishing a correction when the journalist in question denied ever having put out such a story. With such media, who needs rumors?”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Gujarat after Godhra: Real violence, selective outrage (2003)

Women, Communication, Question, Time

“The two men who lived there were father & son – that his name was Maretts [perhaps Maritz] … We gave him some tracts which he received with great pleasure – observing this we asked if he had a bible, he feelingly answered no, and that when he was last in the Cape about two years ago he was about purchasing a bible, but he found he had not as many dollars with him as would pay for it. Mr. Moffat immediate brought his octavo bible from which he preached and presented it to him. He hugged the bible in his arms with the apparent affection as if it has been his own child. I mentioned that it would show him the way to heaven, which he said he believed it would do. Nothing which I witnessed on the journey delighted me more than the manner in which the father and son acted towards this copy of the scriptures. After the evening worship was over they carried the treasure in triumph to their home.”

John Campbell (missionary)

Campbell's recollection in 1819 after a visit to Swellendam, quoted in Die Wêreld van Susanna Smit, 1799–1863, Schoeman (1995)

Men, Pleasure, Way, Home

“There is one quality I find in all the artists I admire most – men like Masaccio, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Cézanne. I mean a disturbing element, a distortion, giving evidence of a struggle of some sort... Great Art is not Perfect. Here the disturbing element comes in. It is instructive to know that Rembrandt copied Mantegna, whose art is the extreme opposite of his own. Why did he do so? Because he was conscious that his own art lacked the classical element. He was aware of the opposite, and that makes him greater.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote in 'Conversations with Henri Moore', J.P. Hodin, in 'The Observer', 24 Nov. 1958
1955 - 1970

Men, Art, Perfection

“Fair play is an English word. It is not a French word, and it has been copied all over the world. Unfortunately, it does not function any more here.”

Arsène Wenger (1949) French footballer and manager

19 April 1997
Quotations from the Public Comments of Arsene Wenger: Manager, Arsenal Football Club (2005)

World

“In the near future, the web is going to be the master copy of human knowledge. We need to figure out ways to use that knowledge.”

Håkon Wium Lie (1965) Norwegian software engineer

The Web Will Be the Master Copy of Human Knowledge http://gigaom.com/2010/05/21/web-will-be-the-master-copy-of-human-knowledge/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OmMalik+(GigaOM), an interview with GigaOM, May 21, 2010.

Way, Knowledge, Future

“I can generate suctional forces, which act indirectly and are entirely undetectable. No current of air can be noticed; only an almost imperceptible cooling, as occurs when air is sucked in strongly with the back of the hand held in front of the mouth. It is therefore incorrect to say that I have copied the cyclones and typhoons of the tropics.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Implosion Magazine, No. 83, p. 17. (Callum Coats: Energy Evolution (2000))
Implosion Magazine

“To me a heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on 9 different floors and one house would be fitted up with special copies of the Dial printed on soft tissue and kept in the toilets on every floor and in the other house we would use the American Mercury and the New Republic.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (1 July 1925); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

Love, Children, Beauty, Fish

“In Hollywood the man who cleans your pool is an actor. The man who sells you your copy of Variety is an actor. I don't think there's a real person left in the place.”

Neil Gaiman book Signal to Noise

Signal to Noise (1992)

Thinking, Personality

“The idea that art copies nature is a fatal misconception. Art has always operated against nature and for reason.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

undated quotes, The Daily Practice of Painting, Writings (1962-1993)

Art, Idea, Nature

“…the leaders of an independent Scotland will be only too happy to trade away that independence in return for admission to the fleshpots of Brussels for themselves and their families, goes without saying; they have the example of Westminster to copy.”

George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) English-born author of Scottish descent

To Scotland, with Love. p. 124.
The Light's On At Signpost (2002)

Family, Happiness

“Knowing Corot's ideas on tone [copy of a private letter, October 28, 1875].. and Couture's precepts on the subtlety of tints (at the time of his exhibition), having been struck by the intuition of Monet and Pissarro... Rood having been brought to my attention in an article by w:Philippe Gille, Figaro 1881, 3.”

Georges Seurat (1859–1891) French painter

Quotes, 1881 - 1890, Letter to Félix Fénéon', June 1890

Idea, Time

“Let him make this challenge: "I'll release my tax returns when Barack Obama releases his college transcripts and the copy of his admission records to show whether he got any loans as a foreign student. When he releases that, talk to me about my tax returns."”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

2012-01-20
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
TV, quoted in * 2012-01-20
Matt Gertz
Huckabee Wants To Know If Obama Got College Loans "As A Foreign Student"
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201201200016
2011-05-27
regarding criticism of presidential candidate Mitt Romney for refusing to release his tax returns

“The square is spiritually charged. It is the product of mankind, it is not copied from nature like the circle.”

Roger Raveel (1921–2013) painter

version in original Flemish (citaat van Roger Raveel, in het Vlaams): Het vierkant is een geestelijk geladen ding. Het is het product van de mens, het is niet afgekeken van de natuur zoals de cirkel. Quote of Raveel, from his interview in the Dutch newspaper N.R.C., 1991; as cited by Din Pieters in 'Raveel: het vierkant als onbeschreven blad' https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/1996/01/05/raveel-het-vierkant-als-onbeschreven-blad-7294323-a1018022, in N.R.C.-online, 5 Jan. 1996 (translation: Fons Heijnsbroek) 1990's

Nature

“"I'm no gaun to let naebody see the letter," sobbed the boy, "till I gie't to Mr. Lovel, for I am a faithfu' servant o' the office—if it werena for the powny."
"Very right, my little man," said Ochiltree, turning the reluctant pony's head towards Monkbarns; "but we'll guide him atween us." …
[They met Lovel on the way, ] and Davie, who insisted upon a literal execution of his commission by going on to Monkbarns, was with difficulty prevailed upon to surrender the packet to its proper owner, although he met him a mile nearer than the place he had been directed to. "But my minnie said, I maun be sure to get twenty shillings and five shillings for the postage, and ten shillings and sixpence for the express—there's the paper."
"Let me see—let me see," said Oldbuck, putting on his spectacles, and examining the crumpled copy of regulations to which Davie appealed. "Express, per man and horse, one day, not to exceed ten shillings and sixpence. One day? why, it's not an hour—Man and horse? why, 'tis a monkey on a starved cat!"”

Walter Scott book The Antiquary

Vol. I, Ch.15.
The Antiquary (1816), On the postal service

Way, Boy, Cats, Horse

“Here's a tip I've never used: I understand you can learn a great deal of girldom by reading Pride and Prejudice, and I own a copy, but I have never read it. I tried. It was given to me by a girl with a little not inside that read: What is in this book is the heart of a woman. I am sure the heart of a woman is pure and lovely, but the first chapter of said heart is hopelessly boring.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Love, Books, Girl, Understanding

“One of the most amazing and perplexing features of mainstream Christianity is that seminarians who learn the historical-critical method in their Bible classes appear to forget all about it when it comes time for them to be pastors. They are taught critical approaches to Scripture, they learn about the discrepancies and contradictions, they discover all sorts of historical errors and mistakes, they come to realize that it is difficult to know whether Moses existed or what Jesus actually said and did, they find that there are other books that were at one time considered canonical but that ultimately did not become part of Scripture (for example, other Gospels and Apocalypses), they come to recognize that a good number of the books of the Bible are pseudonymous (for example, written in the name of an apostle by someone else), that in fact we don't have the original copies of any of the biblical books but only copies made centuries later, all of which have been altered. They learn all this, and yet when they enter church ministry they appear to put it back on the shelf.”

Bart D. Ehrman book Jesus, Interrupted

Source: Jesus, Interrupted (2009), Ch. 1: 'A Historical Assault on Faith'

Books, Error, Learning, Appearance

“Foolish critics often betray their ignorance by saying that a painter or a writer "only copies what he has seen, or puts down what he has known." They forget that no man imagines what he has not seen or known, and that it is in the selection of the characteristic details that the artistic power is manifested.”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

The Principles of Success in Literature (1865)

Imagination, Forgetting

“I think that people here expect miracles. American management thinks that they can just copy from Japan—but they don't know what to copy!”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

If Japan Can...Why Can't We? (1980)

People, Thinking

“An alert copyreader on a newspaper couldn’t believe it when he read a reporter’s account of the theft of 2025 pigs. That’s a lot of pigs, he thought, and called the farmer to check the copy. “Is it true that you lost 2025 pigs?” he asked. “Yeth,” lisped the farmer. “Thanks,” returned the copyreader, and corrected the story to read “two sows and 25 pigs.””

Evan Esar (1899–1995) American writer

Humorous English (1961), p213

Reading

“It's easy to rib Microsoft for copying Apple, and seeing the two stores side by side does make Team Redmond look a bit pathetic. But in business, losing face isn't as important as making money. And after visiting a couple Microsoft stores, I'm convinced they'll help Microsoft bring in more cash.”

Farhad Manjoo (1978) American journalist

Welcome to the Microsoft Store http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/04/microsoft_store_it_s_a_blatant_rip_off_of_the_apple_store_and_it_just_might_save_the_company_.html in Slate (25 April 2012)

Money, Business, Help

“I admit, that the commonplace man can never, by copying, produce a masterpiece; he notes every detail but he does not really see - the artist penetrates below the surface into the very heart of nature; for him everything is beautiful because beauty in art consists of character.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

RODIN, AUGUSTE. L'Art. Entretiens réunis par Paul Gsell, 1911

Beauty, Art, Nature, Heart

“Here is laid the Body
of Jonathan Swift, Doctor of Sacred Theology,
Dean of this Cathedral Church,
where fierce Indignation
can no longer
injure the Heart.
Go forth, Voyager,
and copy, if you can,
this vigorous (to the best of his ability)
Champion of Liberty.”
Hic depositum est Corpus IONATHAN SWIFT S.T.D. Hujus Ecclesiæ Cathedralis Decani, Ubi sæva Indignatio Ulterius Cor lacerare nequit, Abi Viator Et imitare, si poteris, Strenuum pro virili Libertatis Vindicatorem.

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Hic depositum est Corpus
IONATHAN SWIFT S.T.D.
Hujus Ecclesiæ Cathedralis
Decani,
Ubi sæva Indignatio
Ulterius
Cor lacerare nequit,
Abi Viator
Et imitare, si poteris,
Strenuum pro virili
Libertatis Vindicatorem.
Latin epitaph for himself (1740)
Variant translations:
Swift has sailed into his rest;
Savage indignation there
Cannot lacerate his Breast.
Imitate him if you dare,
World-Besotted Traveler; he
Served human liberty.
W. B. Yeats, in The Winding Stair (1933)
Here is laid the body of Jonathan Swift, Doctor of Divinity, Dean of this Cathedral Church, where savage indignation can no longer tear his heart. Go, traveller, and imitate if you can one who strove with all his might to champion liberty.
As translated in John Mullan's review of Jonathan Swift by Victoria Glendinning, in London Review of Books, Vol. 20 No. 21 (29 October 1998)
Epitaph (1740)

Heart

“If [music] has that tag on it, regardless if it sounds like that or not they’ll never go and find out what it really sounds like. To be labeled “emo” is sometimes very apropos, because there are a bunch of bands that actually sound like carbon copies of each other. But again, that’s music, so.”

Joe Trohman (1984) American musician

My Heart Will Always Be The B-Side To My Tongue (2004), Ultimate Guitar Interview (2008)

Music

“So if I say you that your paintings [which his brother-in-law recently made] have nothing in common with what we see generally classified and accepted, and that you have always managed to produce things that were entirely your own work, as I truly see it, that does not mean you have the right to be seated next to Leonardo -
What's more, this originality is suicidal as it distances you from a 'clientele' used to 'copies of copiers', often referred to as 'tradition'-
One more thing, your technique is not the 'expected' technique – It's your own personal technique, borrowed from nobody – and there again, this doesn't attract the clientele.... In a word, do less self-analysis and enjoy your work without worrying about opinions, your own as well as that of others.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote from Duchamp's letter to Jean Crotti (Duchamp's brother-in-law) and his sister Suzanne Duchamp, New York 17 Augustus 1952; as cited in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 pp. 167-168
1951 - 1968

Law, Suicide, Painting, Personality

“Publishers and lawyers like to describe copyright as “intellectual property” — a term also applied to patents, trademarks, and other more obscure areas of law. These laws have so little in common, and differ so much, that it is ill-advised to generalize about them. It is best to talk specifically about “copyright,” or about “patents,” or about “trademarks.”
The term “intellectual property” carries a hidden assumption—that the way to think about all these disparate issues is based on an analogy with physical objects, and our conception of them as physical property.
When it comes to copying, this analogy disregards the crucial difference between material objects and information: information can be copied and shared almost effortlessly, while material objects can't be.
To avoid spreading unnecessary bias and confusion, it is best to adopt a firm policy not to speak or even think in terms of “intellectual property”.
The hypocrisy of calling these powers “rights” is starting to make the World “Intellectual Property” Organization embarrassed.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

Words to Avoid (or Use with Care) Because They Are Loaded or Confusing (1996)
1990s

World, Law, Way, Thinking

“The suggestion that words are symbols for things, actions, qualities, relationships, et cetera, is naive, a gross simplification. Words are slippery customers. The full meaning of a word does not appear until it is placed in its context, and the context may serve an extremely subtle function -- as with puns, or double entendre. And even then the "meaning" will depend upon the listener, upon the speaker, upon their entire experience of language, upon their knowledge of one another, and upon the whole situation. Words do not "mean things" in a one-to-one relation like a code. Words, too, are empirical signs, not copies or models of anything; truly, onomatopoeia and gestures frequently seem to possess resemblance, but this resemblance does not bear too close examination. A cockerel may seem to say cook-a-doodle-do to an Englishman, but a German thinks it says kikeriki, and a Japanese kokke-kekko. Each can paint only with the phonetic sound of his own language.”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

Source: On Human Communication (1957), What Is It That We Communicate?, p. 10-11

Knowledge, Thinking, Appearance, Painting

“Not long ago, all the copies of the Hindi edition of my book, Understanding Islam Through Hadis, were confiscated by the police. … The civil liberties wallahs, otherwise a vocal lot, have been eloquently silent on this and similar bans. But then they are active only in certain preferred directions, on behalf of certain preferred sections and for the benefit of certain preferred ideas.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Hinduism and monotheistic religions (2009)

Books, Idea, Understanding

“Life is dull, but it could be worse and it could be better. We accept that a corporation determines our life’s routines. It’s the trade-off so that we don’t have to be chronically unemployed creative types, and we know it. When we were younger, we’d at least make a show of not being fooled and leave copies of Adbusters on our desktops. After a few years it just doesn’t matter. You trawl for jokes or amusingly diversionary. wav files. You download music. A new project comes along, then endures a slow-motion smothering at the hands of meetings. All ideas feel stillborn. The air smells like five hundred sheets of paper.
And then it’s another day.”

Douglas Coupland book JPod

JPod (2006)

Life, Fools, Music, Feeling

“I was attracted to Romanesque sculptures, to the complete re-invented figures and the freedom with which the Romanesque artist constructed them. He does not copy, he creates in a totally anti-Renaissance fashion can say that in Romanesque sculpture I have found a starting point for distortion.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Kunst und Zeugnis, Dora Vallier, Zürich 1967, p. 67
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1960's

Fashion, Freedom

“In sculpture the projection of the fasciculi must be accentuated, the foreshortening forced, the hollows deepened; sculpture is the art of the hole and the lump, not of clear, well-smoothed, unmodelled figures. Ignorant people, when they see close-knitted true surfaces, say that 'it is not finished.' No notion is falser than that of finish unless it be that of elegance; by means of these two ideas people would kill our art. The way to obtain solidity and life is by work carried out to the fullest, not in the direction of achievement and of copying détails, but in that of truth in the successive schemes. The public, perverted by académie préjudices, confounds art with neatness. The simplicity of the 'École' is a painted cardboard ideal, A cast from life is a copy, the exactest possible copy, and yet it has neither motion nor eloquence. Art intervenes to exaggerate certain surfaces, and also to fine down others. In sculpture everything depends upon the way in which the modelling is carried out with a constant thought of the main line of the scheme, upon the rendering of the hollows, of the projections and of their connections; thus it is that one may get fine lights, and especially fine shadows that are not opaque. Everything should be emphasised according to the accent that it is desired to render, and the degree of amplification is personal, according to the tact and the temperament of each sculptor; and for this reason there is no transmissible process, no studio recipe, but only a true law. I see it in the antique and in Michael Angelo. To work by the profiles, in depth not by surfaces, always thinking of the few geometrical forms from which all nature proceeds, and to make these eternal forms perceptible in the individual case of the object studied, that is my criterion. That is not idealism, it is a part of the handicraft. My ideas have nothing to do with it but for that method; my Danaids and my Dante figures would be weak, bad things. From the large design that I get your mind deduces ideas.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Auguste Rodin: The Man, His Ideas, His Works, 1905, p. 61-63

Life, People, Truth, Law

“Arrangements to make people pay for using a program, including licensing of copies, always incur a tremendous cost to society through the cumbersome mechanisms necessary to figure out how much (that is, which programs) a person must pay for. And only a police state can force everyone to obey them. Consider a space station where air must be manufactured at great cost: charging each breather per liter of air may be fair, but wearing the metered gas mask all day and all night is intolerable even if everyone can afford to pay the air bill. And the TV cameras everywhere to see if you ever take the mask off are outrageous. It's better to support the air plant with a head tax and chuck the masks.
Copying all or parts of a program is as natural to a programmer as breathing, and as productive. It ought to be as free.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1980s, GNU Manifesto (1985)

People, Support, Nature, Parting

“Science, like art, is not a copy of nature but a re-creation of her.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

Part 1: "The Creative Mind", §9 (p. 20)
Science and Human Values (1956, 1965)

Art, Nature, Science

“I'd like to see people try to sample the sound less and try to sample the style a bit more. Some people see this sort of 'copying' as offensive… I'm inclined to think the opposite - all music is built on imitation and expansion.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Static Line interview, 1998

People, Music, Thinking

“So, they'd prefer me to do a nude, would they? Fine I'll do them a nude... I'll redo it [his painted copy of Giorgioni's 'Woman with musicians'], with a transparent atmosphere, like those women over there [women bathing in the river, Summer of 1862]. Then I suppose they'll really tear me to pieces. They'll tell me I'm just copying the Italians now, rather than the Spanish. Ah, well, they can say what they like.”

Edouard Manet (1832–1883) French painter

the painting Manet means here became his most famous one: 'Déjeuner sur l'herbe'
Manet's quote to his friend Antonin Proust in 1862, from Manet, Francoise Cachin, Barrie & Jenkins, London 1991, p. 16
1850 - 1875

Women, Tear, Summer, Painting

“But what do you think would happen if we had burned a copy of the Koran on tonight's show? There would be riots in scores of countries. Embassies would fall. In response to our mistreating a book, millions of Muslims would take to the streets, and we would spend the rest of our lives fending off credible threats of murder. But when ISIS crucifies people, buries children alive, and rapes and tortures women by the thousands—all in the name of Islam—the response is a few small demonstrations in Europe and a hashtag.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "Can Liberalism Be Saved From Itself?" (October 7, 2014) http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/can-liberalism-be-saved-from-itself 2010s

Women, Children, People, Books

“I feel it, but I cannot express it,… I cannot analyse the Celtic genius to my own satisfaction. In the Middle Ages art came from groups, not from individuals. It was anonymous; the sculptors of cathedrals no more put their names to their works than our workmen put theirs on the pavement that they lay. Ah! what an admirable scorn of notoriety! The signature is what destroys us. We do portraits, but what we do is not so great. Thèse kings and queens, on the cathedrals, were not portraits. The fellow-workers stood for one another, and they interpreted; they did not copy. They made clothed figures; the nude and portraiture only date from the Renascence. And then those fellows cut with the tool's end into the block, that is why they were called sculptors. As for us, we are modellers. And what a disgraceful thing that casting from life is, which so many well-known sculptors do not blush to use! It is a mere swindling in art. Art was a vital function to the image-makers of the thirteenth century; they would hâve laughed at the idea of signing what they did, and never dreamed of honours and titles. When once their work was finished, they said no more about it, or else they talked among themselves. How curious it would hâve been to hear them, to be present at their gatherings, where they must hâve discussed in amusing phrases, and with simple, deep ideas!… Whenever the cathedrals disappear civilisation will go down one step. And even now we no longer understand them, we no longer know how to read their silent language. We need to make excavations not in the earth, but towards heaven…”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Auguste Rodin: The Man, His Ideas, His Works, 1905, p. 63-64; About the genius of the Gothic sculptors.

Life, Age, Dreams, Art

“The Romanists were forced in self-defense to issue rival translations. Such were made by Emser (1527), Dietenberger (1534), and Eck (1537), and accompanied with annotations. They are more correct in a number of passages, but slavishly conformed to the Vulgate, stiff and heavy, and they frequently copy the very language of Luther, so that he could say with truth, "The Papists steal my German of which they knew little before, and they do not thank me for it, but rather use it against me."”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

These versions have long since gone out of use even in the Roman Church, while Luther's still lives.
Roman Catholic rival German versions of the Bible
Source: The last edition of Dr. Eck's Bible appeared in 1558, at Ingolstadt, Bavaria.

Truth

“The main object of cybernetics is to supply adaptive, hierarchical models, involving feedback and the like, to all aspects of our environment. Often such modelling implies simulation of a system where the simulation should achieve the object of copying both the method of achievement and the end result. Synthesis, as opposed to simulation, is concerned with achieving only the end result and is less concerned (or completely unconcerned) with the method by which the end result is achieved. In the case of behaviour, psychology is concerned with simulation, while cybernetics, although also interested in simulation, is primarily concerned with synthesis.
Most of the major developments in models and theories of artificial intelligence have taken place in the western world — mostly, indeed, in the US and Britain — and it was only relatively recently that "core developments", as opposed to more peripheral developments and applications, have spread over Europe and the Soviet Union.”

Frank Honywill George (1921–1997) British psychologist

George (1973) "Soviet Cybernetics, the militairy and Professor Lerner" in: New Scientist (March 15, 1973). Vol. 57, nr. 837. p. 613

World, Intelligence

“Materialism is the recognition of "objects in themselves", or outside the mind; ideas and sensations are copies of images of those objects.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1908)

Idea

“God himself must have either written or dictated to Adam the events of chapter 1. Adam then added chapters 2-4 to the record and passed it on to one of his descendants, presumably on clay tablets baked or dried into pottery. Noah would have carried the sacred records on the ark. Noah and his sons would have been eyewitnesses to the events in Genesis 5:11 - 10:32. Shem must have written the last part (chapters 10:1-11:10) and given the responsibility of keeping the records to his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson Terah, whom he outlived by 70 years! Evidently Moses, being raised in Egypt to be a pharaoh and having access to the best libraries and records, came into possession of the records or a copy of them, and was the inspired editor to put the records into their final form the book of Genesis.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 49-50

God, Books, Parting

“Imagination's truth is from its power:
Man's genius can create when nature's felt;
He copies when he deems that he invents.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Translations, From the French

Truth, Imagination, Nature

“When it comes to the design of social and societal systems of all kinds, it is the users, the people in the system who are the experts. Nobody has the right to design social systems for someone else. It is unethical to do so. Design cannot be legislated, it should not be bought from the expert, and it should not be copied from the design of others. If the privilege of and responsibility for design is "given away," others will take charge of designing our lives and our systems. They will shape our future.”

Béla H. Bánáthy (1919–2003) Hungarian linguist and systems scientist

Source: Designing Social Systems in a Changing World (1996), p. 128; Cited in: Roberto Joseph et al. (2002) " Banathy's Influence on the Guidance System for Transforming Education http://www.indiana.edu/~syschang/decatur/reigeluth_pubs/documents/95_banathy_influence_on_gste.pdf". World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution, 58(5/6) 379-394

People, Future

“It is all well and good to copy what one sees, but it is much better to draw only what remains in one's memory. This is a transformation in which imagination and memory collaborate.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quote of Degas in 1883, as cited by Colin B. Bailey, in The Annenberg Collection: Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-impressionism, publish. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009, p. 30 note 10
Degas confided this to Pierre-George Jeanniot
1876 - 1895

Imagination, Memory, Drawing

“I should wish, however, to know what this reason is, through which we are more excellent than all the tribes of animals. Is it because we have made for ourselves houses, by which we can avoid the cold of winter and heat of summer? What! do not the other animals show forethought in this respect? … But if nature, which gave them life, had chosen to give to them also hands to help them, they too would, without doubt, raise lofty buildings and strike out new works of art. Yet, even in those things which they make with beaks and claws, we see that there are many appearances of reason and wisdom which we men are unable to copy, however much we ponder them, although we have hands to serve us dexterously in every kind of work.”

Arnobius (255–327) Christian apologist

Book II, § 17
Adversus Nationes

Life, Wisdom, Men, Art

“To make a Dadaist Poem (1920)

Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are—an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.”

Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist

Quote of Tzara's poem from 1920; as cited in Cambridge Introduction to Modernism, ed. Pericles Lewis (Cambridge UP, 2007), p. 107 - online: https://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/To_Make_a_Dadaist_Poem 1920s

“Two people sat talking in a small room for several weeks, and things started happening. They began thinking about each other; one would dream about the other; they copied each other's mannerisms. What was it really all about? She liked to think she had a firm hold on the reins at all times, but the truth was that often she was just along for the ride.”

Lisa Alther (1944) Novelist

Other Women

People, Truth, Dreams, Thinking

“Alchian: Two things you [Hayek] wrote that had a personal influence on me, after your Prices and Production, were 'Individualism and Economic Order' [sic — Alchian certainly has in mind Hayek's 'Economics and Knowledge'] and 'The Use of Knowledge in Society.' These I would regard as your two best articles, best in terms of their influence on me.
Hayek: 'Economics and Knowledge' — the '37 one — which is reprinted in the volume, is the one which marks the new look at things in my way.
Alchian: It was new to you, too, then? Was it a change in your own thinking?
Hayek: Yes, it was really the beginning of my looking at things in a new light. … I was aware that I was putting down things which were fairly well known in a new form, and perhaps it was the most exciting moment in my career when I saw it [i. e. 'Economics and Knowledge'] in print.
Alchian: Well, I'm delighted to hear you say that, because I had that copy typed up to mimeograph for my students in the first course I gave here [i. e. UCLA]. And Allan Wallace … came through town one day, and I said, 'Allan, I've got a great article!" He looked at it, started to laugh, and said, "I've seen it too; it's just phenomenal!' I'm just delighted to hear you say that it was exciting, because it was to me, too … that was a very influential article, I must say.”

Armen Alchian (1914–2013) American economist

Interviewing Friedrich Hayek, 1978

Way, Knowledge, Thinking, Light

“In the digital age our idea of political activism is forwarding an e-mail. You copy four people and think, "I've fuckin' done my part for today."”

Marc Maron (1963) Comedian

Tickets Still Available (2006)

People, Age, Idea, Thinking

“During the fourteenth century some unknown scholars prepared a new translation of the whole Bible into the Middle High German dialect. It slavishly follows the Latin Vulgate. It may be compared to Wiclif's English Version (1380), which was likewise made from the Vulgate, the original languages being then almost unknown in Europe. A copy of the New Testament of this version has been recently published, from a manuscript in the Premonstratensian convent of Tepl in Bohemia. Another copy is preserved in the college library at Freiberg in Saxony.”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

German versions of the Bible that preceded the Luther Bible

“There is a beautiful tale among the Australian aborigines which says that the bow and arrow were not man's invention, but an ancestor God turned himself into a bow and his wife became the bowstring, for she constantly has her hands around his neck, as the bowstring embraces the bow. So the couple came down to earth and appeared to a man, revealing themselves as bow and bowstring, and from that the man understood how to construct a bow. The bow ancestor and his wife then disappeared again into a hole in the earth. So man, like an ape, only copied, but did not invent, the bow and arrow. And so the smiths originally, or so it seems from Eliade's rather plausible argument, did not feel that they had invented metallurgy; rather, they learned how to transform metals on the basis of understanding how God made the world.”

Marie-Louise von Franz (1915–1998) Swiss psychologist and scholar

Creation Myths (1972), Deus Faber

God, World, Beauty, Feeling

“The third and intermediate kind of instruction, which connects the first two… relates to the application of scientific principles to practical purposes. It qualifies the student to plan a structure or a machine for a given purpose, without the necessity of copying some existing example, and to adapt his designs to situations to which no existing example affords a parallel. It enables him to compute the theoretical limit of the strength or stability of a structure, or the efficiency of a machine of a particular kind—to ascertain how far an actual structure or machine fails to attain that limit—to discover the cause of such shortcomings—and to devise improvements for obviating such causes; and it enables him to judge how far an established practical rule is founded on reason, how far on mere custom, and how far on error.”

William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) civil engineer

p, 125
"On the Harmony of Theory and Practice in Mechanics" (Jan. 3, 1856)

Error

“There's some records that sell millions of copies, that it's really unclear if anybody liked it who was making it, y'know?”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_XNghTKvq8.

“The case of programs today is very different from that of books a hundred years ago. The fact that the easiest way to copy a program is from one neighbor to another, the fact that a program has both source code and object code which are distinct, and the fact that a program is used rather than read and enjoyed, combine to create a situation in which a person who enforces a copyright is harming society as a whole both materially and spiritually; in which a person should not do so regardless of whether the law enables him to.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1980s, GNU Manifesto (1985)

Books, Law, Way, Reading

“There is a reason that I require all new agents and analysts to study the FBI’s interaction with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and to visit his memorial in Washington as part of their training. And there is a reason I keep on my desk a copy of Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s approval of J. Edgar Hoover’s request to wiretap Dr. King. It is a single page. The entire application is five sentences long, it is without fact or substance, and is predicated on the naked assertion that there is “communist influence in the racial situation.””

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

The reason I do those things is to ensure that we remember our mistakes and that we learn from them.
2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Study, Learning, Memory, Parting

“Leave the earth to the strong and athletic,
And the sea to adventure upon.
But the sun and the sand
No contractor can copy;
We lie in the land
Of the lotus and poppy;
We vegetate, calm and aesthetic,
On the beach, on the sand, in the sun.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Many Long Years Ago (1945), Pretty Halcyon Days

Lie, Strong, Sun, Sea

“Summertime, 1950, I recognized Isherwood browsing in a Santa Monica bookstore. My book had just come out, so I grabbed a copy off the shelf, signed it and gave it to him. His face fell and my heart sank, but two days later he called and said, "Do you know what you've done?" I asked, "What?" And he simply told me to read his review in the Times. His rave turned my life around; the book immediately made the best-seller lists and has been in print ever since.
He was very kind in introducing me to various people he thought I should know, like Aldous Huxley, who had been my literary hero since Brave New World came out.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

On the chance meeting with Christopher Isherwood just after publication of The Martian Chronicles which led to fame and acclaim outside of SF fandom.
Playboy interview (1996)

Life, People, Books, World

“But Shakespeare's magic could not copied be;
Within that circle none durst walk but he.”

John Dryden The Tempest

The Tempest, Prologue.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“While my companion is busily engaged in getting copy for a special article about the Market, I step nimbly out of the way of a swarthy gentleman from Calabria, who with his two-wheeled barrow is the last link in the immense chain of transportation connecting the farmer in the distant tropics and the cockney pedestrian who halts on the sidewalk and purchases a banana for a couple of pennies.”

William McFee (1881–1966) American writer

The Market

Way, Distant

“Combining al Qaeda's significant fighting capabilities with a stronger focus on the administrative capabilities that might permit it to hold ground, the Islamic State copied the latter from Hezbollah's model. Basically, Islamic State is a combined al Qaeda and Lebanese Hezbollah on steroids, destabilizing the region, dissolving borders/changing the political geography in the mid-east, and hardening political positions that make mid-east peace-building more remote by the day.”

James Mattis (1950) 26th and current United States Secretary of Defense; United States Marine Corps general

General Mattis [Ret.] speaking about the Islamic State of the Levant in an interview with Business Insider http://www.businessinsider.com/mattis-testimony-isis-2014-9

Peace, Change, Fight

“They are shamelessly copying us.”

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

About Microsoft and the operating system which would be released as Vista, as quoted in "Apple's Jobs swipes at Longhorn" om cNet News (21 April 2005)
2000s

“It wasn't that Microsoft was so brilliant or clever in copying the Mac, it's that the Mac was a sitting duck for 10 years. That's Apple's problem: Their differentiation evaporated.”

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

As quoted in Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company (2004) by Owen W. Linzmayer
2000s

Problem

“Do you believe in the existence of Socrates? Alexander the Great? Julius Caesar? If historicity is established by written records in multiple copies that date originally from near contemporaneous sources, there is far more proof for Christ's existence than for any of theirs.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, What's So Great about Christianity (2007), Ch. 26

Christ

“For the last 15 years, Microsoft’s master business plan seems to have been, "Wait until somebody else has a hit. Then copy it."”

David Pogue (1963) Technology writer, journalist and commentator

" State of the Art: Bing, the Imitator, Often Goes Google One Better http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/technology/personaltech/09pogue.html?emc=eta1," The New York Times, July 09, 2009.

Business, Waiting

“I forwarded your Excellency a return of troops at this post, and a copy of a plan for establishing magazines. I could wish to know your pleasure as to the magazines, as soon as possible.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (31 October 1776)

Pleasure

“I admit, of course, that the artist does not see nature as the vulgar do. His emotion reveals to him the inner truths that underlie appearance. But the only principle In art is to copy what one sees. Every other method is ruinous. No one can embellish Nature. It is simply and solely a question of seeing. Doubtless a mediocre man, when he copies will never produce a work of art. He looks without seeing. No matter how minutely he observes, the result will be flat and without character. But the artist's trade is not for mediocre men, and no amount of training can supply them with talent. The artist sees - he sees with his heart. He sees deep into the heart of Nature. To the artist everything in Nature is beautiful.
The vulgarian imagines that what looks to him ugly In Nature is not material for the artist. He would forbid us to represent what displeases and offends him. He makes a grave mistake. What is commonly called ugliness in Nature may become a great beauty in art.
In the realm of realities, people regard as ugly everything that is deformed and diseased and that suggests sickness, weakness and suffering. They regard as ugly everything that defies regularity, which is to them the symbol and condition of health and strength. A hump is ugly, bow-legs are ugly, misery in rags is ugly. Ugly, again, are the soul and conduct of the immoral, the vicious, the criminal man, the abnormal man who is an enemy of society; ugly is the soul of the parricide, the traitor, the unscrupulous slave of ambition. And it is right that the lives and the of which we can expect only evil should be given an odious epithet.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Rodin on realism, 1910

Men, People, Health, Truth

“If we copy, the thing never looks right [and] the same occurs with regard to those buildings which do not profess to be copies; both they and the copies want spirit. They are dead bodies… We are at our wits.”

William Burges (1827–1881) English architect

William Burges "Art and Religion", in: The Church and the World: Essays on Questions of the Day, Orby Shipley ed., London, 1868, pp. 574-98; As cited in: John Pemble. Venice rediscovered. Clarendon Press, 16 mrt. 1995. p. 133

Dead

“My father was able to acquire a copy of the first printed edition of the Granth Saheb of Sri Garibdas soon after it was published from Baroda. He would frequently read it out to my mother and myself with his own running commentary on the lives of saints and bhaktas as they were mentioned in the sakhis and the ragas. I also sat sometimes turning the pages of this work. I hardly had the mental equipment to understand the mystic messages. But the stories of some great saints like Kabir, Nanak, Ravidas, Dadu, Namdev, Chippa, Pipa and Dhanna were very strongly impressed on my mind, as also the stories of renowned Muslim sufis like Rabiya, Mansur, Adham Sultan, Junaid, Bayazid and Shams Tabriz. These stories were to flower into an abiding satsanga (holy company) in years to come.”

Garib Das (1717–1778) Hindu Yogi

Goel, S. R. (2007). How I became a Hindu.

Flowers, Understanding, Reading

“… as the true object of education is not to render the pupil the mere copy of his preceptor, it is rather to be rejoiced in, than lamented, that various reading should lead him into new trains of thinking.”

William Godwin (1756–1836) English journalist, political philosopher and novelist

"Of Choice in Reading", The Enquirer (1797)

Education, Thinking, Reading, Training

“I have to make it clear, however, that I haven't seen the whole film except for 20 minutes of the second part although I know the screenplay very well because Russians have a custom of making an extra copy for the author.”

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author

On Solaris screening (1972)

Parting

“Medieval Islam was a religion of remarkable tolerance for its time, allowing Jews and Christians the right to practise their inherited beliefs, and setting an example which was not, unfortunately, copied for many centuries in the West. The surprise, ladies and gentlemen, is the extent to which Islam has been a part of Europe for so long, first in Spain, then in the Balkans, and the extent to which it has contributed so much towards the civilisation which we all too often think of, wrongly, as entirely Western. Islam is part of our past and our present, in all fields of human endeavour. It has helped to create modern Europe. It is part of our own inheritance, not a thing apart.”

Charles, Prince of Wales (1948) son of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom

Speech on Islam and the West http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/speechesandarticles/a_speech_by_hrh_the_prince_of_wales_titled_islam_and_the_wes_425873846.html to the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, 27 October 1993. 1990s

Religion, Thinking, Time, Past

“Far out across the Mojave there arose the shimmer of heat. I made my way up the path to the Ford. In the seat was a copy of my book, my first book. I found a pencil, opened the book to the fly leaf, and wrote: To Camilla, with love, Arturo I carried the book a hundred yards into the desolation, toward the southeast. With all my might I threw it far out in the direction she had gone. Then I got into the car, started the engine, and drove back to Los Angeles.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust (1939), Chapter Nineteen

Love, Books, Angels, Cars

“The author had not followed the precedents of any other artist, nor has he been able to copy Nature itself.... He who departs from Nature will surely merits high esteem, since he has to put before thee yes of the public forms and poses which have existed previously in the darkness and confusion of an irrational mind..”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

1790s, Goya's announcement about 'Los Caprichos', 6 Febr. 1799

Nature

“Sir,
Having long deferred to make any report relating to the observations that were taken at sea by captain Campbell, in the year 1757, which you transmitted to me by order of the lords of the admiralty, I think it necessary to acquaint you, that, upon examining those observations, I perceived that they were not in all respects accompanied with such circumstances as are requisite for forming a right judgment of the accuracy and certainty with which observations proper for finding the longitude at sea by the moon can in fact be taken; for which reason I delayed giving my opinion upon this point till I could have an opportunity of comparing a greater variety of observations, made at different times, and with different instruments: such an opportunity having lately been given me by captain Campbell, who has favoured me with a copy of several observations that were made by him in 1758 and 1759, I now beg leave to lay before their lordships the result of the comparisons which I have made.”

James Bradley (1693–1762) English astronomer; Astronomer Royal

Miscellaneous Works and Correspondence (1832), To Mr. Cleveland Secretary of the Admiralty (April 14, 1760)

Thinking, Time, Sea

“Progress of his Version. Luther was gradually prepared for this work. He found for the first time a complete copy of the Latin Bible in the University Library at Erfurt, to his great delight, and made it his chief study. He derived from it his theology and spiritual nourishment; he lectured and preached on it as professor at Wittenberg day after day. He acquired the knowledge of the original languages for the purpose of its better understanding. He liked to call himself a "Doctor of the Sacred Scriptures."
He made his first attempt as translator with the seven Penitential Psalms, which he published in March, 1517, six months before the outbreak of the Reformation. Then followed several other sections of the Old and New Testaments,—the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Prayer of King Manasseh, the Magnificat of the Virgin Mary, etc., with popular comments. He was urged by his friends, especially by Melanchthon, as well as by his own sense of duty, to translate the whole Bible.
He began with the New Testament in November or December, 1521, and completed it in the following March, before he left the Wartburg. He thoroughly revised it on his return to Wittenberg, with the effectual help of Melanchthon, who was a much better Greek scholar. Sturz at Erfurt was consulted about coins and measures; Spalatin furnished from the Electoral treasury names for the precious stones of the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21). The translation was then hurried through three presses, and appeared already Sept. 21, 1522, but without his name.
In December a second edition was required, which contained many corrections and improvements.
He at once proceeded to the more difficult task of translating the Old Testament, and published it in parts as they were ready. The Pentateuch appeared in 1523; the Psalter, 1524.”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

Luther's competence as a Bible translator

Understanding, Knowledge, Sense, Study

“Gutenberg’s press flooded the market. In the early 1500s John Tetzel, the head pardoner for German territories, would sweep into a town with a collection of already printed indulgences, hawking them with a phrase usually translated as “When a coin a coffer rings / A soul for heaven springs.” The nakedly commercial aspects of indulgences, among other things, enraged Martin Luther, who in 1517 launched an attack on the Church in the form of his famous Ninety-five Theses. He first nailed the theses to a church door in Wittenberg, but copies were soon printed up and disseminated widely. Luther’s critique, along with the spread of Bibles translated into local languages, drove the Protestant Reformation, plunging the Church (and Europe) into crisis. The tool that looked like it would strengthen the social structure of the age instead upended it. From the vantage point of 1450, the new technology seemed to do nothing more than offer the existing society a faster and cheaper way to do what it was already doing. By 1550 it had become apparent that the volume of indulgences had debauched their value, creating “indulgence inflation”—further evidence that abundance can be harder for a society to deal with than scarcity. Similarly, the spread of Bibles wasn’t a case of more of the same, but rather of more is different—the number of Bibles produced increased the range of Bibles produced, with cheap Bibles translated into local languages undermining the interpretative monopoly of the clergy, since churchgoers could now hear what the Bible said in their own language, and literate citizens could read it for themselves, with no priest anywhere near. By the middle of the century, Luther’s Protestant Reformation had taken hold, and the Church’s role as the pan-European economic, cultural, intellectual, and religious force was ending.”

Clay Shirky (1964) American technology writer

Cognitive Surplus : Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (2010)

Age, Way, Soul, Spring

“It's funny how the music industry is enraged about the Internet and the way things are copied without being paid for. But you know why people steal the music? Because they can't afford the music. I'm not condoning downloading music for free. I don't think that's really fair, but I understand it. If you brought CD prices back down to $8.98, you would solve a lot of the industry's problems.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Rolling Stone interview (2002)

People, Music, Way, Understanding

“I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn [the art of decorative or hand lettering]. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful. Historical. Artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture. And I found it fascinating. None of this had any hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would never have multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.”

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

2000s, Address at Stanford University (2005)

Life, Beauty, Hope, Art

“I'm not a collector. I don't keep letters, or books, or souvenirs. But I do keep one copy of each translation of my books into a foreign language. Have you ever seen a murder story printed in Singhalese? Wow!”

Rex Stout (1886–1975) American writer

Life, "Author Rex Stout vs. the F.B.I."

Books

“ Every individual word in a passage or poetry can no more be said to denote some specific referent than does every brush mark, every line in a painting have its counterpart in reality. The writer or speaker does not communicate his thoughts to us; he communicates a representation for carrying out, this function under the severe discipline of using the only materials he has, sound and gesture. Speech is like painting, a representation made out of given materials -- sound or paint. The function of speech is to stimulate and set up thoughts in us having correspondence with the speaker's desires; he has then communicated with us. But he has not transmitted a copy of his thoughts, a photograph, but only a stream of speech -- a substitute made from the unpromising material of sound. The artist, the sculptor, the caricaturist, the composer are akin in this [fact that they have not transmitted a copy of their thoughts], that they express (make representations of) their thoughts using chosen, limited materials. They make the "best" representations, within these self-imposed constraints. A child who builds models of a house, or a train, using only a few colored bricks, is essentially engaged in the same creative task.* Metaphors can play a most forceful role, by importing ideas through a vehicle language, setting up what are purely linguistic associations (we speak of "heavy burden of taxation," "being in a rut"). The imported concepts are, to some extent, artificial in their contexts, and they are by no means universal among different cultures. For instance, the concepts of cleanliness and washing are used within Christendom to imply "freedom from sin." We Westerners speak of the mind's eye, but this idea is unknown amongst the Chinese. that is, we are looking at it with the eyes of our English-speaking culture. A grammar book may help us to decipher the text more thoroughly, and help us comprehend something of the language structure, but we may never fully understand if we are not bred in the culture and society that has modeled and shaped the language. (p. 74)”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

See Gombrich in reference 348
On Human Communication (1957), Language: Science and Aesthetics

Books, Color, Communication, Idea

“Edie thought Joan was the most intelligent girl she had ever met. She had an independent mind, always questioning what anyone said, including her teachers at Barnard. In one of her marginal notes in her copy of Marx's Capital and Other Writings, there are echoes of Burroughs's thinking: "Maybe Marxism is dynamic and optimistic, and Freudianism is not. Is one more serviceable than the other? Why does it always have to be either/or?”

Joan Vollmer (1923–1951) Common-law wife of William S. Burroughs

Ted Morgan, Literary Outlaw, discusses Edie Parker's impression of Joan Vollmer:
About

Girl, Intelligence, Question, Thinking

“The recent trend of the Bengali film industry is to remake South Indian films. My film had a mockery about that since I don’t believe in remakes. I won’t make a film which is a copy of something. I am very firm in my beliefs, even if that causes me to lose a few producers. There are many people who are making loads of remakes. But at the same time, there are many newcomers who have original ideas, working on new things, and getting producers. It is obviously a bright side of the shoel thing.”

Arin Paul (1980) Indian film director

Interview on Calcuttatube on Remakes http://calcuttatube.com/arin-paul-exclusive-interview/1608/

People, Idea, Time

“In many ways I still resent the wretched yellow journalism that was clearly evident in (the media's) treatment of the game — 60 Minutes in particular. I've never watched that show after Ed Bradley's interview with me because they rearranged my answers. When I sent some copies of letters from mothers of those two children who had committed suicide who said the game had nothing to do with it, they refused to do a retraction or even mention it on air. What bothered me is that I was getting death threats, telephone calls, and letters. I was a little nervous. I had a bodyguard for a while.”

Gary Gygax (1938–2008) American writer and game designer

GameSpy interview, Pt. I (15 August 2004)

Death, Children, Way, Game

“It may be true that one can reach more microcomputer users with advertising. If this is really so, a business which advertises the service of copying and mailing GNU for a fee ought to be successful enough to pay for its advertising and more. This way, only the users who benefit from the advertising pay for it.
On the other hand, if many people get GNU from their friends, and such companies don't succeed, this will show that advertising was not really necessary to spread GNU. Why is it that free market advocates don't want to let the free market decide this?”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1980s, GNU Manifesto (1985)

People, Way, Business, Success

“you must see that if two things are alike, then it is a further question whether the first is copied from the second, or the second from the first, or both from a third.’ ‘Some that thought that all these loves were copies of our love for the landlord.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Pilgrim’s Regress 59
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

Love, Question

“This is sad. I just think it’s a little ridiculous we are still only looking at the surface of one another. Red hair? Blue hair? Pink? Blonde? Short? Long? Whatever. We might as well shave our heads. Hair has nothing to do with the reason we playing music. It’s a style. Something that will never last as long as the songs we play and the words we sing. Listen up ladies in bands, I’m so proud to be one of you and I don’t care if we all look exactly alike or if we are all carbon copies of each other. We have things to say and it’s up to us to get people to not just look but to LISTEN!”

Hayley Williams (1988) American singer-songwriter and musician

Hayley on her Tumblr talking about Nikki Simmons (lead singer of the rock/metal upcoming band Morningside http://www.facebook.com/themorningside) who was being cyber-bullied because she looks like Hayley. http://yelyahwilliams.tumblr.com/post/8459667145

People, Sadness, Music, Thinking

“Aviation seems almost a gift from heaven to those Western nations who were already the leaders of their era, strengthening their leadership, their confidence, their dominance over other peoples. It is a tool specially shaped for Western hands, a scientific art which others only copy in a mediocre fashion; another barrier between the teeming millions of Asia and the Grecian inheritance of Europe — one of those priceless possessions which permit the White race to live at all in a pressing sea of Yellow, Black, and Brown.”

Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist

Aviation, Geography, and Race (1939)

People, Art, Confidence, Fashion

“It is very good to copy what one sees; it is much better to draw what you can't see any more but is in your memory. It is a transformation in which imagination and memory work together. You only reproduce what struck you, that is to say the necessary.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

C'est très bien de copier ce qu'on voit, c'est beaucoup mieux de dessiner ce que l'on ne voit plus que dans son mémoire. C'est une transformation pendant laquelle l'ingéniosité collabore avec la mémoire. Vous ne reproduisez que ce qui vous a frappé, c'est-à-dire le nécessaire.
Quoted in Maurice Sérullaz, L'univers de Degas (H. Scrépel, 1979), p. 13
quotes, undated

Imagination, Memory, Drawing

“Like art, science is born of itself, not of nature. There is no neutral naturalism. The artist, no less than the writer, needs a vocabulary before he can embark on a 'copy' of reality.”

Ernst Gombrich (1909–2001) art historian

E. H. Gombrich (1962), quoted in: Robert Maxwell Young. Mind, Brain, and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century, 1970. p. 101.

Art, Nature, Reality, Science

“Admiral Smyth says that no family is quite civilized unless it possesses a copy of some encyclopaedia and a telescope.”

William Henry Smyth (1788–1865) English naval officer and hydrographer

Quoted by Maria Mitchell http://pinetreeweb.com/bp-admiral.htm

Family

“Herbert Casson was a highly prolific writer on management, with a career as a management guru spanning some four decades. A skilled writer who was also a successful entrepreneur, he used his own experiences and acute observations of the world around him to develop a philosophy of management based on the concept of ‘efficiency’. He published more than seventy books, which by the time of his death had sold more than half a million copies around the world. Something of a maverick, he was never really accepted by the business academic community in either Britain or America. His books were popular and populist, highly entertaining and full of penetrating insight.”

Herbert N. Casson (1869–1951) Canadian journalist and writer

Morgen Witzel (2003), Fifty Key Figures in Management. p. 42

Death, Books, World, Communication

“There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys; they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked out the sum for themselves.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

17 January 1837 http://books.google.com/books?id=2iwmAQAAMAAJ&q=%22There+are+many+people+who+reach+their+conclusions+about+life+like+schoolboys+they+cheat+their+master+by+copying+the+answer+out+of+a+book+without+having+worked+out+the+sum+for+themselves%22&pg=PA53#v=onepage 1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s

Life, People, Books, Cheating

“To put things in perspective, recall that all the great libraries of antiquity–including the libraries of Alexandria and Pergamum–have disappeared completely. However, the world did not lose the knowledge they contained when they disappeared. Some of what was held in those libraries had been moved to other locations, either to be copied or because it was stolen. Even the fate of the libraries of antiquity shows that preservation relies not on the persistence of specific institutions, but on proper functioning of a system that includes redundancy and the sharing of knowledge across institutions. There is a great deal more progress to be made in this respect during this transition to the digital age, but the importance of doing so is unmistakable.”

John Palfrey (1972) US law professor

§8, p. 162
BiblioTech (2015)

Fate, Age, World, Knowledge

“I was definitely getting the hang of this skating thing. I'd started to copy a fancy cross-over turn from a German girl in front of me, and it was working pretty well. I was just about keeping up with her too, which was pleasing. She must have been about six.”

Hugh Laurie book The Gun Seller

The Gun Seller (1996)

Girl

“I see nothing unethical in the job it does. Why shouldn't you send a copy of some music to a friend?”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

Comment on Napster
2000s, Thus Spake Stallman (2000)

Music

“You may recall that a few weeks ago, President Obama came to this chamber, and he addressed the chamber on health care before a joint session of the House and the Senate. During that session I was privileged to be here, and I saw my colleagues on the far side of the aisle, the Republicans, waving pieces of paper during his speech, and I was wondering what they were. I couldn’t imagine — it almost seemed like they wanted President Obama’s autograph. I just didn’t get it. I heard from one of my colleagues that this is what they called the Republican health care plan. I went over, after the speech was over, I picked up a copy that was lying down on the Republican side, and it turns out that the Republicans’ health care plan was a blank piece of paper. I inquired further, trying to find out exactly what the Republicans’ health care plan is. And it’s my duty and pride tonight to be able to announce exactly what the Republicans plan to do for health care in America.”

Alan Grayson (1958) American politician

2009

Health, Imagination, Lying, Housing

“Graphic novelist: Excuse me…you’ve got a copy of the “Protocols of Zion” there! …Why?
Student 2: It reveals the jews’ plan to rule us!
Student 3: Yeah!
Student 4: There’s a jew' in every major government postof the western world, see?
Student 5: Jews are behind all the bad things that are happening today!
Student 2: Yeah, their plan is clearly laid out in the “Protocols,” see?
Graphic novelist: Wait a minute!…what if it has been proven that the book is a fake?
It is the invention of a forger working for the old Russian secret service in 1898 to defame Jews
The protocols never existed never!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.123

Secret, Books, World, Waiting

“If you buy a DVD you have a copy. If you want a backup copy you buy another one.”

Jack Valenti (1921–2007) President of the MPAA

Statement to the Associated Press (November 2003), as quoted in "DVD-copy program tweaked after court order" at CNN.com (23 February 2004) http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/02/23/dvd.suit.ap/