Quotations

[T]he concept of the author is never more alive than when pronounced dead. Seán Burke, in The Death and Return of the Author: Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida.

How can there be a “side” in this when everyone involved is either a writer or an editor? All of us, by definition, are on the same side—the word side. Every word I write is a piece of my heart, and I presume you feel the same way. Florence King, in a response to Molly Ivins following misquotation and plagiarism of King's work by Ivins.

I loved plagiarism. Jean-Paul Sartre in Les Mots.



Lesko has a unique writing process: plagiarism. Wendy Guild Swearingen in "Mr. Info: Take the Money--It's Free!" A reference to Matthew Lesko's composing techniques in his bestselling books on how to get "free money" from the US government.





Texts are inherently contumacious. Walter Ong

My books need no one to accuse or judge you: the page which is yours stands up against you and says, “You are a thief." Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis), Epigrams (Book I, epigram 53)




One cannot be a little bit pregnant. Pregnancy is a very definite although somewhat temporary status. Nor can one be a little corrupt. The same applies to scientific fraud. Alfred E. Hartemink in "Publish or Perish (3)-- Fraud and ethics."


In essence, plagiarism and her two twins--fabrication and falsification, emanate from sheer human greed. S.M. Sapatnekar in reference to a plagiarism scandal involving scientists at India's Institute of Sleep Medicine. "Plagiarism." An editorial in JAPI (Journal of the Association of Physicians of India), vol. 52, pp. 527-530.

[R]esearch suggests that scientific fraud is widespread. In a comprehensive study involving 4,000 researchers from 100 faculties, a University of Minnesota research team found that one in three scientists sometimes plagiarize, and that 22 percent of all researchers admit to sometimes handling data carelessly. . . . Fraud seems most likely to pop up in the research of unmonitored scientists who are working alone on irreproducible research. Dave Mcmullin in reference to the research fraud of Jan Hendrik Schön.

. . . giving credit where credit is due. The ivory tower is not without its dungeon for those who ignore this ironclad cardinal rule. John Sledge in "Plagiarism Charges Pull Prize-Winner from Shelves." Mobile Register.

Whoever invented turnitin should be shot. Anonymous College Student posting to complain about plagiarism detection.

Are we to divert our eyes from great photography as to protect us from a possible visual plagiarism accusation? Louise Seals, Richmond Times-Dispatch in reference to visual plagiarism involving an un-named intern.

If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism - if you steal from two, it's research. Wilson Mizner, American Screenwriter.

Mr Latham, who paraded himself as a new politician with home-grown ideas all of his own has gone to Yankee land for his ideas. Australian Prime Minister John Howard in reference to Opposition Leader Mark Latham's apparent lifting of US President Bill Clinton's 1997 State of the Union speech for use in his 2004 address on "Australia's National Identity" [!] to the Globe Foundation in Sydney, Australia.

It isn't easy being a novelist in an age where plagiarism runs rampant. Indrani Roy Mitra in a rediff.com article on "Deepa Mehta to settle plagiarism case".

What is even more tragic, however, is that those who purposely commit plagiarism reveal the shallowness of their own character. To knowingly steal the work of another and pass it off as your own is to betray yourself in a way that can never be redeemed. By committing this act you are destroying the honor, integrity and principles of your own spirit. This is perhaps the longest lasting and most tragic consequence of plagiarism. "Editorial: Plagiarism is a Serious Offense." The Rebel Yell.

The stigma of plagiarism can mark a reporter like a scarlet letter. Peter Robertson, in reference to the Catherine Fitzpatrick/Milwaukee Journal Sentinal plagiarism cover-up.

[T]echnology is uncompromosingly efficient and dangerous to those who have something to hide. Audrey Ingram Roberts, whistleblower in the case involving former College of the Bahamas President Dr. Rodney Smith





File sharing has never been more popular than it is now . . . People have heard all the legal threats and admonitions, but that's not enough. They don't believe it. Eric Garland, CEO of Internet measurement company BigChampagne in reference to record numbers of people using file-sharing networks to exchange movies and songs.

'Pigs is Pigs' and Plagiarists Are Thieves . . . The thief is always with us. Since the beginning of time, some miserable creature, urged by need or greed, has been stealing the property other men honestly acquired. The other night some lowbrow broke into my stable and stole my brace and bits, my saw, my plane, and all my best tools. I don't have to wonder who he is -- I know he is a thief . . . If my mind steals another's stuff I ought to pay for what I stole. What my mind needs is a good spanking; it needs to be taught a thing or two or it is liable to get papa into serious trouble. A man may excuse a careless mind of that sort once or twice, but if it begins to make a habit of unconsciously cerebrating other authors' stuff it needs a good whaling, or its owner should get out of the author business and go to digging ditches, where his mind will not be able to pilfer. Ellis Parker Butler in Plagiarism: The "Art" of Stealing Literary Material.





Our discovery of extensive plagiaries in King's academic papers affected every aspect of our work by raising new questions about the biographical and historical significance of many of the documents we had selected for inclusion. Should the existence of such plagiaries be selected for inclusion in King's papers? How should we convey to readers of our edition the intellectual provenance of papers containing plagiarized passages? Should we indicate every instance of textual appropriation and attempt to determine which instances constituted plagiarism? Answering these questions required not onlv judgments about proper scholarly practices but also about our research capabilities and the expectations of the edition's potential readers, both scholarly and lay. Clayborne Carson, Chief Editor of the King Papers Project, commenting on the difficulties posed by the "extensive plagiaries" committed by Martin Luther King, Jr.

They lied, they told half-truths, they made up fables, they did everything they could but address facts. In the face of their own university's rules against plagiarism, Boston University's academic authorities and professors somehow found excuses for King's plagiarism. They found extenuating circumstances . . . they compromised their own university's integrity . . . [and] called into question the very standing of the university as a place where cheating is penalized and misrepresentation condemned. Jacob Neusner, in the Foreward to Theodore Pappas' The Martin Luther King, Jr., Plagiarism Story.

Plagiarism is intellectual fraud. Barry R. Gross in his review of Theodore Pappas' The Martin Luther King, Jr., Plagiarism Story.

To defend King's [Martin Luther King, Jr.] plagiarism, plagiarism finds itself cleaned up and made a virtue of blacks . . . I believe Martin Luther King, Jr., was a man of conscience and character--but flesh and blood, like the rest of us. Those who thought to protect his name through deceit have traduced the man's own highest ideals, and did so, by excusing the inexcusable, in a way that ultimately diminished the stature and impoverished the heritage of a great man. Jacob Neusner, in the Foreward to Theodore Pappas' The Martin Luther King, Jr., Plagiarism Story.

One wants to think the best of fellow scholars. The scholarly enterprise depends on mutual trust. When one scholar violates that trust, it damages the legitimacy of the entire academy . . . Thomas Brown of Lamar University (from a draft of Brown's essay "Assessing Ward Churchill’s Version of the 1837 Smallpox Epidemic").

I'll get you for this! Ward Churchill, Colorado University's notorious "9-11 Prof" in a threatening, middle-of-the-night phone call to Dalhousie University Professor Fay G. Cohen after she raised allegations in 1997 that Churchill had plagiarized her work. Cohen subsequently dropped the issue due to fears for her personal safety.

Mr. Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder . . . the quintessential professor run amok . . . . John Gravois in "Colorado Governor Proposes Standardizing the Tenure Process, a Possible Response to the Ward Churchill Controversy", Chronicle of Higher Education.



A plagiarist of this magnitude, one may at least hold as an hypothesis, follows a certain modus operandi; and it is merely fortuitous that this particular set of thefts rather than some other or others have come to light. . . I did not ask to be the one to blow the whistle on Louis Roberts at UA, but no one else seems ready to do so. John Monfasani, in a memo to the University of Albany, SUNY, Community in exposing the plagiaries of Classics Department Chair Louis Roberts.



If all the world is a text and the text has no inherent meaning, non-sense makes as much sense as anything else. Ralph Luker in reference to the nonsensical article by Alan Sokal, his experiment with cultural studies involving the publication of a pseudo-academic article on "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"




What concerns me is the proliferation, not just of nonsense and sloppy thinking per se, but of a particular kind of nonsense and sloppy thinking: one that denies the existence of objective realities, or (when challenged) admits their existence but downplays their practical relevance. Alan D. Sokal in "A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies."



The perfect forgeries existing among us are unknown, undetected aliens. Denis Dutton in "Forgery and Plagiarism." Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics.

The sad fact is that plagiarism has spread like a virus with universal access to so much published material on the Internet, and that is forcing newspapers to adopt new measures to protect the integrity of their content. Robert Rivard, San Antonio Express-News Editor.

The Times [New York Times] has developed an addictive tolerance for anonymous sources, the crack cocaine of journalism. Anonymous Editorial in Editor and Publisher in reference to the Jayson Blair episode at the New York Times.

It seems that the publishers of Harry Potter are afraid of Tanya Grotter. Dmitry Yemets, author of satirical Tanya Grotter book.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good. Dr. Samuel Johnson.

[T]he high-tech industry has . . . put the youngsters into such a rip-burn-share frenzy that they have no inkling that intellectual property matters. The scary part? These are the same values that we're seeing in the adult workplace. Robin Raskin, former editor of PC Magazine and FamilyPC in a letter to the New York Times (April 7, 2005).

There's a claim that I plagiarized once in my college paper. That appears to be the first time. Jayson Blair in response to an Editor and Publisher interview question asking when he had first plagiarized.

I have a technique of sort of weaving real documents and real reference materials into my novel and making a seamless narrative using both documents and fiction. Barbara Chase-Ribaud (in response to plagiarism allegations concerning her book Valide: A Novel of the Harem)

I'm sure his book sold better than mine . . . he's a big mahatma and thinks he can get away with this sort of thing. Henry J. Abraham, commenting on Harvard Professor Laurence H. Tribe's appropriation of passages from a book Abraham wrote.

Anthropology is going to have to completely revise its picture of modern man between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago. Archaeologist Thomas Terberger after the discovery of serious fraud, fabrication, and plagiarism in the work of anthropologist Reiner Protsch von Zieten.

. . . academics remain curiously willing to vaporize the whole phenomenon of plagiarism in a cloud of French theory [i.e. Foucault, Barthes, Derrida]. When I spoke to one audience of professors in 1990, their questions, sometimes hostile, tended to concern why I hadn't addressed concepts like Roland Barthes' "death of the author," and the possibility that there is no such thing as originality. I didn't address such matters because they seemed to me then, as they do now, absurd. The professors don't really believe these theories, either. They're the type who can't sit on the university's parking-regulations committee without getting into a discussion of nature vs. nurture, but if they catch someone pilfering their own bibliographies, you can count on a cry of bloody murder, not an invitation to hermeneutics. But none of this keeps them from continuing to propound imported, abstract fantasies. Thomas Mallon in "How Academics Responded to My Book About Plagiarism" (History News Network).

The mass media and those who write for it are often incredibly irresponsible and they need to be told so. Timothy M. Kelly, in reference to the uncritical media reception of Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking.

I made a serious mistake during the editorial process of completing this book, and delegated too much responsibility to others during the final editing process. I was negligent in not overseeing more carefully the final product that carries my name. I accept full responsibility for this error and apologize to Professor Balkin, NYU Press, my colleagues, students and others for this serious mistake. Harvard Law Professor Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. in his public apology for several pages of plagiarized text in his book All Deliberate Speed.

This is ridiculous, I am being singled out. Every biographer must draw on material that's gone before, that is inevitable. Every historical writer has to follow in the footsteps of others. Response of Dr. James Mackay to charges of "spectacular and sustained plagiarism" in his historical biographies.

All men have heard of the Mormon Bible . . . such an insipid mess of inspiration . . . The book [of Mormon] seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. Mark Twain in Roughing It.

Why should faculty members be held less responsible for academic honesty than first-year college students? Janis P. Bellack, in an article responding to plagiarism of her own work by another university professor, David A. Latif.

[My unacknowledged copying is] a tragedy, probably the worst thing I've ever done. Roger Shepherd, after plagiarism was uncovered in his book Structures of Our Time.

When I pointed out in Arion that Foucault, for all his blathering about "power," never managed to address Adolph Hitler or the Nazi occupation of France, I received a congratulatory letter from David H. Hirsch (a literature professor at Brown), who sent me copies of riveting chapters from his then-forthcoming book, "The Deconstruction of Literature: Criticism After Auschwitz" (1991). As Hirsch wrote me about French behavior during the occupation, "Collaboration was not the exception but the rule." I agree with Hirsch that the leading poststructuralists were cunning hypocrites whose tortured syntax and encrustations of jargon concealed the moral culpability of their and their parents' generations in Nazi France. Camille Paglia in "What I Hate About Foucault".

Plagiarism is a terribly serious charge to lay against an experienced high-profile author like Jessica Adams, but for such an author to commit plagiarism is an unforgivable sin. Dr. Debra Adelaide of Sydney University of Technology in regard to alleged plagiarism of Jessica Adams.

They . . have very unhandsomely and plagiaristically anticipated my own original lucubrations. Oxford English Dictionary

While they preach against the sin, many scholars seem wary of confronting the sinners . . . If plagiarists are academe's cockroaches . . . is everyone too scared to look behind the stove? Thomas Bartlett and Scott Smallwood in a Chronicle of Higher Education article on academic plagiarists.

Fine words! I wonder where you stole 'em. Jonathan Swift

As educators begin to rely more on technology [to catch student plagiarists], hopefully they'll realize that -- at least for now -- nothing can completely replace the watchful eyes of human beings. Andy Dehnart in "Plagiarist, beware!" Salon.com article.

Plagiarism is rarely a one-shot transgression. Norman Fruman

If an author is once detected in borrowing, he will be suspected of plagiarism ever after. Oxford English Dictionary

The kernel, the soul—let us go farther and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances is plagiarism. Mark Twain, in a letter to Helen Keller after the "Frost King" incident.

The poorest of all plagiarists, [are ] the plagiarists of words. Oxford English Dictionary

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true. Nathaniel Hawthorne

We have squeezed the tattered rag of Europe's conscience and extracted a few drops of contrition. European heads of state assembled at the scene of the greatest crime in history, a crime in which almost all who came represented states which were, to a greater or lesser extent, complicit [in the Nazi "Final Solution"]. Leo Solomon, in a letter to the editor of The Jerusalem Post just after the 60 year commemoration of Nazi death camp liberations.

The whole thing was right there . . . I was sitting at home reading the play, and I realized that it was I. I felt robbed and violated in some peculiar way. It was as if someone had stolen--I don't believe in the soul, but, if there was such a thing, it was as if someone had stolen my essence. Dorothy Otnow Lewis, after language from her memoirs was reworked into the broadway play Frozen by Bryony Lavery.

The plagiarist is, in a minor way, the cop who frames innocents, the doctor who kills his patients. The plagiarist violates the essential rule of his trade. He steals the lifeblood of a colleague. David Plotz



There is no real financial remedy for the ethical offense of plagiarism, because the ultimate victim is the reader. Peter Charles Hoffer in Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, Fraud--American History from Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose, Bellesiles, Ellis, and Goodwin.

I was once a sinner myself. I bought my first wife's engagement ring with the ill-gotten gains from my own little cottage industry of writing for hire . . . at a Jesuit college. Robert Lee Mahon

Fools make researches and wise men exploit them. H.G. Wells

What is an Author? Michel Foucault

The Muslim Council of Britain refused to participate in the Holocaust memorial . . . So, to those Muslims who didn't participate: Thank you for reminding us Jews that the Nazis' agenda is ongoing. Howard Wolle, Jerusalem Post letter to the editor.

It was a case of cut and paste . . . They even left in my mistakes . . . I was a bit disenchanted because they never cited my article. Ibrahim al-Marashi, student author whose work was plagiarized by Number 10, Downing Street in the case of the "sexed up" intelligence dossiers.

A Gore appearance should be closed-captioned with the truth. Margaret Carlson, in TIME magazine

I am not out there stealing other people's writings. If I am writing up a passage and it is a story I want to tell, and this story fits, and a part of it is from other people's writing, I just type it up that way and put it in a footnote. Stephen Ambrose



The first law for the historian is that he shall never dare to utter an untruth. The second is that he shall suppress nothing that is true. Moreover, there shall be no suspicion of partiality in his writing, or of malice. Cicero, De Oratore, II, 62

Plagiarize . . .

. . .plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize,
Only be sure to always - to call it, please - research. From the song "Lobachevsky" by Tom Lehrer.

Whether or not bin Laden meant to pass the poem off as his own, he surely hoped that it would convince some Arab viewers who might otherwise see him as a terrorist that he’s really a Bedouin warrior-poet celebrating a rebellion fought on behalf of the prophet . . . If you substituted airplanes and plastic explosives for horses and swords, you would have a more or less accurate picture of the world of interminable desert warfare and religious coercion that bin Laden is willing to die to recreate. Judith Shulevitz, New York Times Book Review

The stories in which a poet, usually the more famous of the two, robs a fellow-poet of a verse are widely known and made much of by Arabic authors . . . It is quite obvious that they owe their notoriety to their scandalous, or at least sensational, character. Gustave E. von Grunebaum, “The Concept of Plagiarism in Arabic Theory”

I told you so . . . For more than 20 years, I’ve preached that anonymous sources are the root of evil in journalism. Al Neuharth, USA Today Founder, after the Jack Kelley fiasco.

Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

He that goes a-borrowing, goes a-sorrowing. Benjamin Franklin



The only ism Hollywood believes in is plagiarism. Dorothy Parker


Nobody arrives at fraud as the first thing they ever do . . . . They got there by doing little things and getting away with it. Paul Friedmen.

Plagiarism is an old-fashioned concept, and not always as straightforward as it might appear. Julia M. Klein in "Plagiarism and Other Unoriginal Sins." Chronicle of Higher Education (November 11, 2005).

Yes trust them not: for there is an Upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you. Robert Greene, in A Groatsworth of Wit in what some Shakespeare scholars have taken to mean a charge of plagiarism against William Shakespeare.

Most writers both steal and create; some of the more interesting ones create by stealing. It thus might be said that while a plagiarist is a writer with a bad name, a writer with a good name is merely an undetected plagiarist. Anthony Julius, in "William Shakespeare, you stand accused of being a crow, an ape and a thief. How do you plead?"




Saudis with American doctorates should be taken with a very large pinch of salt, just like their Iranian equivalents back in the Shah’s day. How many Ministry-sponsored Saudis ever flunk out of an American Ph.D. program or write anything decent enough to be published in English, in a genuinely refereed journal, on its own merits? If you try reading the sort of stuff published by the proud Saudi holder of a State Department Ph.D. you’ll see that it’s either total and complete garbage or it was completely rewritten by his mentor. In the latter case, there’s no telling where the Saudi’s efforts stopped and his mentor took over. Amazingly, Hofuf University library has a modest collection of the Ph.D. theses churned out by our hosts and they’re neither illuminating reading nor any worthwhile contribution to knowledge. Most of the theses and dissertations I’ve seen read like they were compiled by the people who offer ‘Term Paper Assistance’ in the ad pages of the mags read by college students in the U.S.A. Informant 51, in a doctoral thesis by B. Corr entitled "Arabian Tales: Expatriate Myth and Belief in the Arabian Peninsula"

Mr. Klein’s reproduction of chunks of text from the Internet for a term paper at Athabasca University is yet another example of the brazen ways that students present other people’s work as their own to professors at the end of term. Ira Wagman, Lecturer, Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication, in reference to cut-n-paste plagiarism by the Premier of Alberta, Ralph Klein

No one suffers the pangs and arrows of outrageous fortune like the exposer of a famous plagiarist, for it is he, not the sinner and certainly not the sin, who becomes the center of debate, the target of abuse, and the victim of the hot and harsh lights of public scrutiny. Theodore Pappas, author of several books on the plagiaries of Martin Luther King,Jr.

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Disclaimer: All of the famous plagiarists featured in this webspace remain “alleged plagiarists”, the documented allegations having been made by others in the professional literature and/or the popular media. Further details relating to these allegations will be forthcoming in the book edition of Famous Plagiarists. Although Dr. Lesko is a professor at Saginaw Valley State University, the Famous Plagiarists Research Project represents the individual research of John P. Lesko, plagiarologist, and SVSU accepts no responsibility for the content of these pages. Comments or questions should be directed to