A reporter for NPR’s Morning Edition used my favorite misquote in her “Stanford Center Advocates for Fair Use on the Web” piece that aired on May 7, 2007. Though the quote is usually attributed to T.S. Eliot, the reporter attributed a slightly altered version of “Good poets borrow, great poets steal” to Picasso, this time it was “good artists copy, great artists steal.”
I heard the quote “good poets borrow, great poets steal” for the first time on December 16, 2006, in a commentary about fair use and copyright Bill Hammack, a chemical engineering professor, made on MarketPlace.
My mind was blown. In my earlier, more literate, youth, poetry and poets occupied a great deal of my time. I could not imagine T.S. Eliot would have said such a thing.
I had my aunt consult Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations and other sources in her library, and she did not find anything. I searched the Internet and found that the quote mostly appeared only where Bill Hammack was quoted or in articles he had written. He always attributed it to T.S. Eliot.
When I failed to find any reliable reference to the quote, I decided to go to the source; or, to a source that would lead me in the right direction. I knew there had to be a scholarly society dedicated to T.S. Eliot.
Lo and behold, I found the T.S. Eliot Society. Even better I discovered that one of the officers was a professor of English at my undergraduate alma mater, University of Wisconsin, Madison. I had to know if T.S. Eliot really said “good poets borrow, great poets steal” so I reached out to Professor Cyrena Pondrom.
I honestly did not expect to hear back from Professor Pondrom for two reasons: (1) would you respond to some random girl asking a random question and (2) it was December 16!
While sitting in the movie theater watching Casino Royale, my BlackBerry alerted me that I had received a message. To my amazement, Professor Pondrum responded with the actual quote as it appeared in T.S. Eliot’s critical essay on the playwright Philip Massinger, and his works. Apparently, the playwright Massinger may have relied a bit too heavily from time to time on William Shakespeare, with whom he overlapped in time.
So, here is the paragraph from the essay which contains the language which Bill Hammick has bastardized to make a statement that neither T.S. Eliot nor Picasso ever made:
One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.
Eliot, T.S., “Philip Massinger,” The Sacred Wood, New York: Bartleby.com, 2000.
In his essay on Philip Massinger, T.S. Eliot makes an argument that mature, strong poets use other people’s works in a transformative manner that contributes something new to society and culture. He does not argue that “stealing” someone elses works is appropriate or justified as a means to the end. He seems to argue that poets and authors can use other people’s writings as a base for their works as long as the reuse takes the work to a new place, and introduces it to a new audience.
On Monday, Ms. Sydell used a version of the “good poets borrow, great poets steal” quote that has been attributed to Picasso. I have not gone to the lengths I went to debunk the T.S. Eliot version but my research thus far does not support that Picasso ever uttered the phrase “good artists copy, great artists steal.”
In fact, the publisher of a range of resources for quotations has made all of the books, including Bartletts and Columbia, available online. Only two quotes using the word copy are attributed to Picasso, none with steal or borrow.
Paraphrasing is fine, but attributing a paraphrase as a quote is intellectually and academically dishonest. Both versions of the quote have been adopted and implemented into culture by people justifying broad fair use arguments or their own habits. Significantly, it is unfair that either of the great artists have been affiliated with a quote that does not reflect them, or their work.
This post receives a great deal of traffic from search engines. I would greatly appreciate hearing feedback from you. For example, did the information in the post change the way you used the quote? A comment would be great, or you can email me at nancyprager at yahoo dot com. Thanks!
June 19, 2007 at 1:38 am |
Being an amateur author myself, I can assure you that one of the greatest issues with face is that which only a cliché can present us with (note: I am not sure you know but “cliché” means a matrix, a casting mold).
For example, let us take a popular book of the last decade: the Harry Potter book series; full of references to European myths and ancient traditions, along with a slapstick-like attitude when it comes to the naming conventions of the setting, the whole world described therein is ripe with clichés… or is it?
Examining the main character, we can easily see a number of traits that are quite strikingly not original: ruffled hair, a trait of a smart but probably not awfully bright, always active sort of person – the one you can imagine pacing back and forth when he must wait patiently for others to do the job. Dark hair is also commonly attributed to loneliness and a mysterious persona, and his bright green, emerald even, eyes match the aspect of a person who’d rather laugh than brood for the rest of his life, if he can be given the chance; now add the round glasses and haircut, despite the unruly hair: you have a person that is even lonelier (everyone has seen how some children take to having to wear glasses), and the whole image becomes of a possibly lively boy, whose upbringing, though, is ruining him. Suddenly, that boy is also gifted with magical, even destined powers; do Timothy Hunter and Arthur Pendragon not spring to mind?
The thing, though, is that the above piece of work did not copy anything straight out of some guide to successful authors or some such book; in the end, it made all those a part of the books’ groundwork, a sure footing and a lance to strike forth. Even if not a masterpiece of all time, by all acounts, it certainly is well written to be considered great.
June 29, 2007 at 4:40 am |
Ha ha, just what I needed. Google is king of the internets.
As for Harry Potter. A lot of it was ripped, sometimes very thinly vieled from the Lord of the Rings. Dementors are Nazgul, Horcruxs are the One Ring, Voldemort is Sauron, Harry is Frodo, the Scar is representative of Frodo’s burden of the One Ring, Dumbledore is Gandalf (Dumbledore the White to be in #7?), Snape may be Saruman, Hermoine and Ron is Samwise Gamgee, Fred and George are Merry and Pippin. And on and on and on.
This is why I’ve come to refer to HP as “Lord of the Rings for Dummies”, I say so affectionatly as all 6 books are sitting besides in hardcover.
January 14, 2008 at 10:58 am |
In my opinion, rather than saying Rowling “ripped” those characters from Tolkien, I’d say they shared architypes common to a lot of heroic literature. Arthur and Merlin have a relationship much like Frodo’s and Gandalf’s (also Aragorn’s and Gandalf’s).
March 8, 2008 at 8:21 pm |
Thanks for doing the research on the T.S. Eliot quote. I will never misuse it again.
June 2, 2008 at 11:22 am |
I saw a version of this quote in a YouTube video detailing plagiarism by Led Zepplin from others including blues masters.
Intrigued me since the older I get, the truer it seems.
June 9, 2008 at 11:44 am |
This is great as I was looking for a bit I’d heard many times as “Amateur musicians copy great musicians steal”
June 18, 2008 at 5:42 pm |
Fine article–it really elucidated Eliot’s meaning.
June 26, 2008 at 5:05 pm |
Let me add my thanks to clearing the air about this elusive quote. I had heard that T. S. Eliot had said the original phrase but had never been able to find the exact quote. In the same vein is one of my favorite quotes by Salvador Dali, not in doubt, as it comes from his preface to Pierre Cabanne’s Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, “The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.”
June 26, 2008 at 9:21 pm |
Mr. Fifield,
That quote from Marcel Duchamp might well become my favorite quote of all time! Hysterical. Thanks for sharing.
Right now my favorite quote comes from George Carlin “If you scratch a cynic, you find a disappointed idealist.”
Nancy
June 27, 2008 at 4:07 pm |
[...] in the day, when I went to writing school, our teachers frequently quoted (or somewhat misquoted, as tends to be the case on the Internet as well) the famous T.S. Eliot [...]
July 9, 2008 at 8:18 pm |
Forgive my long response, but you said you were interested in feedback, and this is often on my mind.
First, you write that Eliot would not consider stealing a justified means to an end, and that he seems to argue that “… poets and authors can use other people’s writings as a base for their works as long as the reuse takes the work to a new place…”
Is it not understood, though, that people who paraphrase this are referring to “transformative” works? “Taking the work to a new place”? Or at least—since new artists can’t know whether their work will be considered transformative—they are giving people artistic “permission” to use (really use) material in the hopes of achieving something innovative.
What else would they be saying? “Go ahead and rip stuff off without doing anything interesting with it. Be lazy.” It seems to me a given that out-and-out plagiarism of an entire work adds no value. But there are gray areas when we determine what has value (Melville’s whole chapters of ripped-off maritime literature presumably served a higher purpose in the larger work that was Moby Dick).
Can’t we take it for granted that all artists involved in this conversation share the same goal of progress in the arts?
Second: “Significantly, it is unfair that either of the great artists have been affiliated with a quote that does not reflect them, or their work.” I disagree.
What is “The Wasteland” if not reflective of a spirit of stealing in the best possible sense of the word? The entire poem is a composite. A transformative composite, yes. A new work of art made from the raw materials of other texts. The point is that Eliot’s words and work gave “stealing” this “best possible sense” I’m referring to.
I would never say that the paraphrase “good poets borrow, great poets steal” (which I’ve heard in creative writing classes since college) is a quote. But looking at Eliot’s original paragraph and considering his body of work, I’d say there is no inconsistency here. When I invoke “good poets borrow, great poets steal,” I am indeed using shorthand for the very paragraph you have provided. (And I appreciate your research–I’m glad I saw this, because I’ve been looking for his exact words and context for my own students. Now I can give them the whole thing.)
Truthfully, I am justifying both my own habits as a writer and my broad fair use arguments when I appeal to this line. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, though. I believe Eliot meant what I mean, and that he is my corner, artistically speaking.
July 9, 2008 at 10:59 pm |
Jessica,
Great feedback! Thanks. Your analysis seems to reflect Eliot’s intent. Of course writers and artists build on each other. I think the key in your comment is that the uses are transformative, not just a synching of a song to an anime video others created
It is accurate to call the misquote a paraphrase. Wish others would!
I really appreciate your response.
nancy
August 15, 2008 at 12:21 am |
[...] mentioned this quote to me and I had to find it’s source as http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets-borrow-great-poets-steal-not/ did. Turns out it is from criticism that T.S. Eliot wrote about Philip Massinger. It is a good [...]
August 24, 2008 at 12:54 am |
[...] as many previews as possible in order to find inspiration, transforming these ideas in your own sections. Plagiarism, of course, is an unpardonable sin of journalism. But you can borrow others’ [...]
August 27, 2008 at 3:03 pm |
Thanks for the post — one of my fellow antiquarian booksellers (a leading specialist in poetry) used the misquote and I was “sure” he was wrong. My Google search took me straight to you — where I found exactly what I needed — so thanks for that! I had actually always thought it was Picasso — along with his “Je ne cherche pas, je trouve” (I do not seek, I find), one of my favorite phrases.
September 25, 2008 at 3:21 pm |
This is more than I ever hoped for when entering a google search with the words, “borrow” “steal” and “quote”. Thanks to you and Cyrena Pondrom, for enriching the internet with some actual scholarship. I’ve heard that quote butchered as well, and am thrilled to see TS Elliot’s words set in their accurate context.
October 11, 2008 at 9:41 am |
Thanks. I was looking for the original source of this quote, too. I had heard a version of it attributed to John Lennon, something along the lines of “bad songwriters borrow, good songwriters steal.” The original quote by Eliot is definitely the most eloquent phrasing of it that I have seen. Thanks again.
October 23, 2008 at 5:51 pm |
Thank you thank you thank you. I was just about to misinform anelementary school art class by attributing this to Picasso (while encouraging them to “copy” other works to make their own statements).
November 14, 2008 at 11:44 pm |
Thank you for the info! I had heard the amended quote attributed to various songwriters (usually one or another of the Beatles) and went looking for its origin. I had always agreed, conditionally, with the sentiment, and am pleased to find out that the original text supports exactly the same conditions!
November 26, 2008 at 4:13 pm |
I agree with Jessica; I have never encountered an instance of this quote that uses it to argue wholesale plagiarism is artistically justified. I have always seen it, instead, in the context of the evolution of adaptation and revision, of artists participating in a dialogue with one another, using and engaging with each others’ work. But maybe I’m just hanging out in the right crowd.
January 17, 2009 at 10:13 pm |
I’ve read Eliot’s The Wasteland and an interesting thing about it is that it quotes significantly from Webster’s plays. By quote I mean he lifts lines and places them in his poem – literally ’stealing’, so to speak.
January 28, 2009 at 8:51 am |
Thank you for the clarification! I was drawn to find this information after reading another post on another blog which used the “quote” for an extensive argument of some sort of another. In this case the words were attributed to Picasso and interpreted in an almost literal sense, something that went against my admiration of the artist in question and motivated me to find out “the truth” about this matter… Thanks again!
This is the blog link: http://mysteriousdollfilm.blogspot.com/2009/01/some-picasso-quote-evile.html if you are curious..
February 27, 2009 at 7:36 pm |
First I would like to thank you for the research and clarification. I have to say that as an artist I “steal” things all the time. what I am stealing is not the actual work of any other artist. I steal their ideas on composition, colors or layout. then make the work my own. The finished work is completely seen as original by anyone viewing it. I used to think that this was somehow underhanded until I came across this quote. I wanted to do some research and find out where it actually came from. That brought me here. This post is informative and well researched and I thank you.
May 9, 2009 at 2:34 am |
Thank you for posting this. I’ve often wondered the exact origins (and wording) of that quote.
For myself, I always understood “good artists borrow, great artists steal” to mean essentially what T.S. Eliot’s elaborated version says. It never made sense to me as a justification for plagiarism, regardless of who said it.
June 12, 2009 at 2:03 pm |
Firstly thanks a lot for your research. I have often used the quote, with a touch of black humour, to justify my own lack of creativity. However, now that I have found its source and Elliot’s original arguement I will use it with the hint of guilt. Instead I will atempt to produce as it says something ‘better…unique and utterly different’.
Thank you.
June 12, 2009 at 2:04 pm |
Sorry, I meant without the hint of guilt.
June 13, 2009 at 4:24 am |
Thanka for the research. The issue has been on my mind a bit more since the flareup over the Obama poster. Just when does a derivative work become original? Was an artist inspited by his/her model or Rembrandt?
It seems to me that all human progress occurred because of creative ’stealing’. We all stand on the sholders of the greats who came before us. If we expected technology to be invented anew by each generation, insteaed of creatively ’stealing’ from the generation that came before, we would still be improving our seating from rocks to small logs and discovering that cooked meat tasted much better than raw meat. We readily accept creative stealing of technoligy; why are the arts any different? T. S Elliot was observant, wise, and, most of all, honest. I don’t think he needed to point out each instance of creative stealing.
July 2, 2009 at 10:42 am |
Thanks for clarifying the facts around this quote (found in various wordings). Still, I think the essence of the quote is not outrageous or offensive at all: We all build upon the work of people (e.g., artists, thinkers) who precede us (we all “stand on the shoulders of giants”). If we “borrow,” we do it quite poorly, adding little or no additional value. If we “steal,” we “make it our own” by adding something truly original, truly inventive, truly significant. It’s not about theft in the sense of plagiarism. Plagiarism is more like “borrowing” but claiming it is your own. Yes, it’s confusing because the terms “borrowing” and “stealing” are being used in different way than the usual. Isn’t language fun?!
July 3, 2009 at 7:39 pm |
[...] no one actually ever said this, the point is true, for nations if not poets. The road to greatness is paved with theft. Moreover, [...]
July 15, 2009 at 2:12 pm |
Nice post!
I know the quote as:
“Good composers borrow, great composers steal.”
Igor Stravinsky
I guess this would have been around the same time as TS Elliot? Maybe it was just a zeitgeist thing in the artist communities of the time.
Ofcourse all artists borrow and steal to a certain degree, you could just call it influence or culture.
August 13, 2009 at 3:01 pm |
Scholarship is its own reward but it can be shared with others. Best wishes.
August 18, 2009 at 11:07 am |
Nancy, thank-you, this post was indeed very helpful. What led me to your site was an article in today’s Globe and Mail. “That Eliot line” [sic.] was [mis-]used in an interview between the reporter and filmmaker Quentin Tarantino:
“For example, knowing that his films have been both heavily influenced and widely influential, I toss out that old T.S. Eliot hook – “Good artists borrow, great artists steal” – to see if he’ll take a nibble. Not a chance. Tarantino smiles, recognizing the quote, but he ain’t biting: “Oh, I’ve always liked the sound of that Eliot line, but I’ve never put it under the microscope.”
Thankfully, you have.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/tarantino-a-superstar-cinema-nerd/article1252003/
September 15, 2009 at 12:56 am |
Hi, Nancy. Thank you for clearing up the matter. I was just out looking for the attribution for the paraphrased “quote” and found your site. I was in the middle of a posting on another forum, and I really wanted to just post “Good artists borrow; great artists steal!” and then attribute it to someone, but your research makes it plain I can’t just do that. Instead, my posting was kind of rambling, but I did refer folks back to your site, in case they are as anal retentive as I am. See: http://www.oldschoolguitar.com/board/showthread.php?p=23175&posted=1#post23175.
Have a great day.
September 15, 2009 at 1:03 am |
By the way, it isn’t surprising that that “quote” can upset a lot of artists. They don’t get the distinction between “stealing” in Eliot’s sense and “stealing” as in theft of property. They are either upset at the thought of any artist finding inspiration in another’s work, or they misuse the “quote” to excuse plagiarism.
But Eliot knew the distinction. One can find an idea and breathe new life into it: One can, shall we paraphrase, “stir dull roots with spring rain”.
October 11, 2009 at 5:16 pm |
Thank you, this was very informative! I have wondered for many years where this quote steamed from. I do think many people have used this quote at a license to steal for many years… T.S. Eliot’s paragraph sums up the evolution of art beautifully. It is not a stealing of ideas but a cumulative process. I found an other article that uses this concept in a different manner, but still in a very effective way.
http://andrewmello.blogspot.com/2009/10/pablo-picasso-is-not-asshole.html
October 21, 2009 at 6:03 am |
I saw somewhere somehow (or did I surmise) unfortunately I cannot remember where that T.S. Eliot borrowed heavily – raided it seemed at the time -from contemporary free verse poets of his time for his own style. Quoting Spenser is fine, and taking from contemporary poets is probably also fine, as long as you don’t set out to cover your tracks and with his notes at the end of The Waste Land I think that is what cunning old T.S set out to do and did. But the juncture of influence with plagiarism is a funny thing. I saw a section Shakespeare once that seemed to be the source of Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow..Really I don’t/can’t blame him for any of that, just for the cunning careerism that went along with is inherent in all of it..While at Faber & Faber (1936 was it?) refusing Joyce on ‘Ulysses’ (ah the competition for the Nobel..and how T.S won on that, but how could he do it? Might as well ask: how could Hitler?)..Later refusing Animal Farm.. Was T.S. really a serial destroyer of other writers (the competition) for his own self-aggrandisement? He sent his wife to the loonies after she came up with the title to The Waste Land..after her father gave T.S. his initial financial security..mmm…Have a look at my novel ‘Uncorrected Proof’ on this, a novel about influence and plagiarism, a subject that dare not speak its name in some quaters..The novel’s now with http://www.spdbooks.org in America