Quotes & Sayings About Copying Others

If "fast" and "slow" animals had parties, writes the evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, "some of the fasts would bore everyone with their loud conversation, while others would mutter into their beer that they don't get any respect. Slow animals are best described as shy, sensitive types. They don't assert themselves, but they are observant and notice things that are invisible to the bullies. They are the writers and artists at the party who have interesting conversations out of earshot of the bullies. They are the inventors who figure out new ways to behave, while the bullies steal their patents by copying their behavior. — Susan Cain

I guess the one-liner kind of comic sounds like a guy who can talk and talk and whatever the subject is, he can pull out a one-liner, but I couldn't do that. I didn't like the association. I mean, I love Steven Wright, but so many people started saying "Steven Wright" to me, and I would get mad, because I never wanted to be thought of as copying anybody. — Mitch Hedberg

She wanted to own a book so badly and she had thought the copying would do it. But the pencilled sheets did not seem like nor smell like the library book so she had given it up, consoling herself with the vow that when she grew up, she would work hard, save money and buy every single book that she liked. — Betty Smith

It's actually the fourth,' I say, 'if you count getting fired from CopyMax.'
'Which we do not.' Jo slit-eyes me. She scoops up a handful of Fritos and tosses them into her mouth.
I try to keep a straight face, but it's hard when I add, 'Fired for copying your naked butt and gluing it on your boss's chair. — Julie Anne Peters

What draws people to the instrument is the love for guitar players that play a certain way. I mean, even though it wasn't intentional, it was hard to avoid copying Eddie Van Halen. He was basically the *bleep* back then. — Tom Morello

Fools talk of imitation and copying, all is imitation — Thomas Gainsborough

To model an object is to possess it. — Pablo Picasso

It's like copying truths from God's notebook, though we aren't always sure where to find this notebook or when it will be open. — Yoko Ogawa

To copy a virtue in another is more copying than it is virtue. Try to learn what that virtue is based upon. — Idries Shah

Are you copying others? People won't pay extra for that. You won't be followed for that. — Seth Godin

You cannot innovate by copying. — Larry Ellison

The only thing all successful people have in common is that they're successful, so don't waste your time copying "the successful strategies" of others. — Seth Godin

Even if there were no illegal copying, the advent of digital distribution will put a lot of stress on the movie and music industry. When the distribution costs comes down, that puts more price pressure on the rest of the cost. — Edward Felten

If I don't have anything better to do that day, I'll copy paintings, generally by people who have some relationship to the work of the moment. — Wayne Thiebaud

Copying my styles is not equivalent to conquering me. — Srinivas Shenoy

But he also threatened that if Google continued to develop Android and used any iPhone features, such as multi-touch, he would sue. At first Google avoided copying certain features, but in January 2010 HTC introduced an Android phone that boasted multi-touch and many other aspects of the iPhone's look and feel. That was the context for Jobs's pronouncement that Google's "Don't be evil" slogan was "bullshit. — Walter Isaacson

A woman is handicapped by her sex, and handicaps society, either by slavishly copying the pattern of man's advance in the professions, or by refusing to compete with man at all. — Betty Friedan

In the course of writing one historical book or another, it has happened that I could hardly restrain myself from simply copying entire documents. Indeed, I sometimes sank down among the documents and said to myself, I can't improve on these. — Alfred Doblin

The first 50 years of the cinema were absolutely great years. Original minds were at work establishing the ways to tell a story. And what is happening now is a copying, a pastiche-ing of what was done by great men. — V.S. Naipaul

Well, I would never admit to copying Karl Rove's play book, but there's no doubt that what the Bush people did in 2004 was impressive. They had neighbors talking to neighbors. They did a remarkable job increasing Republican turnout in states like Ohio and Florida. — David Plouffe

When photographers get beyond copying the achievements of others, or just repeating their own accidental first successes, they learn that they do not know where in the world they will find pictures. Nobody does. Each photograph that works is a revelation to its supposed creator. — Robert Adams

Nobody is born with a style or a voice. We don't out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying. — Austin Kleon

Imagine you're copying a very long document, and occasionally you'll put an A where there should be a C. And that mistake has been translated down through the generations, and more mistakes have accumulated. So the longer the lineage has been in existence, the more mistakes the sequence is going to have. — Spencer Wells

Week after week we were reduced to starting the same letter over again and copying out the same appeals, so that after a certain time words which had at first been torn bleeding from our hearts became void of sense. We copied them down mechanically, trying by means of these dead words to give some idea of our ordeal. And in the end, the conventional call of a telegram seemed to us preferable to this sterile, obstinate monologue and this arid conversation with a blank wall. — Albert Camus

Copying is slavery. The letter must never be followed, only the spirit is to be grasped. Higher affirmations live in the spirit. And where is the spirit? Seek it in your everyday experience, and therein lies abundance of proof for all you need. — D.T. Suzuki

Try to resist copying a blueprint from another person's ministry. — Beth Moore

You don't want to just do 'me too' companies that are copying what others are doing. — Peter Thiel

Sadly, history shows us that people literally scrambled their children's brains with heavy exposure to screens at young ages. Developing primate brains are wired to interact with others in a real environment, learning the enormous range of human behaviours from copying the people they love and trust, not staring mindlessly at images. — EXO Books

It's a question of not copying the masters, to look for something, good or bad, for oneself. To enter this liberated state of mind, one cannot copy the others. — Nathalie Sarraute

I rather want my things to be copied than me copying. I would feel ashamed! — Karl Lagerfeld

The princess stops us walking. She holds the lantern up between us, and she looks at me with the eyes of all the princesses and queens in the history book. Eyes as old as Judas The Hero and Micah's boat of stars. She is ancient and profound, and she has Internment fascinated, copying her hair and her clothing in an attempt to understand. She looks at me now the way the whole floating city looks at her--hoping for some sort of answer that doesn't exist. — Lauren DeStefano

Meme A term introduced by the biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins defined memes as small cultural units of transmission, analogous to genes, which are spread from person to person by copying or imitation. Examples of memes in his pioneering essay include cultural artifacts such as melodies, catchphrases, and clothing fashions, as well as abstract beliefs. Like genes, memes are defined as replicators that undergo variation, competition, selection, and retention. At any given moment, many memes are competing for the attention of hosts; however, only memes suited to their sociocultural environment spread successfully, while others become extinct. — Limor Shifman

When you have wit of your own, it's a pleasure to credit other people for theirs. — Criss Jami

Fundamental research is needed to make progress, which you cannot do solely by copying others. If you only do applied research, you quickly lose creativity. — Francois Englert

Forget "minimum viable products" - ever since he started Apple in 1976, Jobs saw that you can change the world through careful planning, not by listening to focus group feedback or copying others' successes. — Peter Thiel

Art does not lie in copying nature.- Nature furnishes the material by means of which is to express a beauty still unexpressed in nature.-The artist beholds in nature more than she herself is conscious of. — Henry James

Admiring doesn't make you exactly like what you admire, admire yourself and you will be original and exactly how you wish and feel to be. — Auliq Ice

Despite modifying his writing to suit the audiences, despite writing plays to draw large crowds, despite using other people's materials and copying plotlines from history, Shakespeare remains the preeminent artist of the English language and his reputation has reached such stratospheric heights as to border on idolatry (or Bardolatry as some people call it). Shakespeare was a product of his time and learned from his peers, but his plays transcend his time as all great works do - his genius is his own. As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? — William Shakespeare

The Man who has not Music in his Soul, Or is not touch'd with Concord of sweet Sounds, Is fit for Treasons, Strategems, and Spoils, The Motions of his Mind are dull as Night, And his Affections dark as Erebus: Let no such Man be trusted.17 Copying a passage — Kevin J. Hayes

It's great to see countries like China and India lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty by essentially copying Western ways of doing things. — Niall Ferguson

All I said was that I thought it was a judgement from God that Blyth had first lost his leg and then had the replacement become the instrument of his downfall. All because of the rabbits. Eric, who was going through a religious phase at the time which I suppose I was to some extent copying, thought this was a terrible thing to say; God wasn't like that. I said the one I believed in was. — Iain Banks

I think as soon as I figured out - and this must have been incredibly young - that comic books were made by humans, rather than being natural phenomenon likes trees or rocks, I just wanted to be one of the people who did that. So I was copying all kinds of cartoons that I was reading, comic books, and eventually learned how to draw cartoon books step-by-step and just, I don't know, I'm not an especially quick learner, but I sure was a dedicated one. — Art Spiegelman

Following of authority in any form, whether self-imposed or established from outside, as well as any form of imitation, copying, is destructive of incentive, of creativeness, and that it blocks the discovery of what is true. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?"
At this, Hermione stood up, her hand stretching towards the dungeon ceiling.
I don't know," said Harry quietly. "I think Hermione does, though, why don't you try asking her?"
A few people laughed; Harry caught sight of Seamus's eye and Seamus winked. Snape, however, was not pleased.
Sit down," he snapped at Hermione. "For your information, Potter, asphodel and wormwood make a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of Living Death. A bezoar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat and it will save you from most poisons. As for monkshood and wolfsbane, they are the same plant, which also goes by the name of aconite. Well? Why aren't you all copying that down?"
There was a sudden rummaging for quills and parchment. Over the noise, Snape said, "And a point will be taken from Gryffindor house for your cheek, Potter. — J.K. Rowling

The most general way of stating the central assertion of the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution is that a population of replicators subject to variation (for instance by imperfect copying) will be taken over by those variants that are better than their rivals at causing themselves to be replicated. This — David Deutsch

Only God creates. The rest of us just copy. — Michelangelo

Imagine the disincentive to software development if after months of work another company could come along and copy your work and market it under its own name ... without legal restraints to such copying, companies like Apple could not afford to advance the state of the art. — Bill Gates

You are here to leave something! You are here to make a point! It is your responsibility to find the point you have to mind or you shall always mind the point others are hitting or missing at the expense of your own point! When you know the point to hit, mind the point and don't miss the point, and no matter how many times you try and fail, let the point be your point and keep hitting! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

When you have practiced drawing for a while ... take pains and pleasure in constantly copying the best works that you can find done by the hand of great masters. — Cennino Cennini

The need for a quick, satisfactory copying machine that could be used right in the office seemed very apparent to me-there seemed such a crying need for it-such a desirable thing if it could be obtained. So I set out to think of how one could be made. — Chester Carlson

The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another. — Quentin Crisp

Windows '98 is so similar to Windows '95 because Apple hasn't invented anything worth copying since 1995. — Jakob Nielsen

Is it not dangerous to have students study together for years, copying the same models and approximately the same path? — Theodore Gericault

I'm not copying you!" Luke said. "A werewolf is totally different than a vampire! You're creepy all the time. Mine is just, like, a monthly thing ... "
"Like PMS?" I suggested.
"Shut up! — Flynn Meaney