Wilson Mizner? Steven Wright? Joseph Cummings Chase? Asa George Baker? Bob Oliver?

Dear Quote Investigator: Some of the websites I come across seem to produce their content simply by using cut and paste. They do not even bother to collect information from multiple sources. I am reminded of the great one-liner by the comedian Steven Wright:

To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.

Actually, I am not sure if this was originally said by Steven Wright. In fact, I am not sure he said it at all. Maybe the websites that list it as one of his jokes are incorrect. Could you investigate this comical saying?

Quote Investigator: Yes, QI will be happy to look into the lineage of this quote. Evidence accumulated by QI points to two possible candidates for authorship: Wilson Mizner and Joseph Cummings Chase. The earliest citations are dated 1938. A version of the saying is attributed to Mizner in a book in that year, and the quip is used by Chase in the October issue of The Commentator magazine.

The famed Algonquin Round Table met in a hotel that was owned and managed by Frank Case who published a book in 1938, Tales of a Wayward Inn, about his experiences. Case attributes a version of the remark about plagiarism to Wilson Mizner [FCWM]:

As Wilson Mizner says, “When you take stuff from one writer it’s plagiarism, but when you take from many writers it’s called research.”

Also, in 1938 Joseph Cummings Chase, a prominent portraitist and art teacher, wrote a piece in The Commentator magazine that includes a variant of the quotation. (Thanks to top-flight researcher Stephen Goranson for obtaining scans of this article for verification.) Chase was head of the Art department at Hunter college in the 1930s [CJCC]:

When a research professor takes pen in hand to do a book on Art he writes on and on without any evidences of the ability to stop. By and by out come five or six hundred more pages largely culled from the tomes of the research lads before him. On the title page of most of the books on Art should be printed, “If you steal from one person it’s plagiarism: if you steal from three persons it’s research.”

The saying was further spread in 1938 via newspapers such as the Santa Fe New Mexican [CSFN]. A short filler item replicates the adage and credits it to the Commentator without mentioning Chase’s name. The Santa Fe paper is dated September 29, 1938 while the Commentator issue is dated October. This is evidence that the magazine was available in advance:

IT’S AN ART

(The Commentator Magazine)

On the title page of most of the books on art should be printed: “If you steal from one person it’s plagiarism; if you steal from three persons it’s research.”

Here are some additional selected citations in chronological order. A book titled “Professional Writing” published in 1938 by a teacher at the University of Oklahoma presents advice to future authors. The instruction proffered casts an interesting light on the quip [PW]:

He apparently followed the advice of Vida, who told beginners to steal from every source. It is the same in literature as in certain other walks of life: as the saying goes—the man who robs one bank is a common thief; the man who robs a hundred is a financier. The moral is, in literature, not to steal from one author, but to learn from many, Plagiarism is not only a crime, but a mark of stupidity, like robbing a country bank.

In December of 1938 the quotation appears in Word Study, a periodical from G. & C. Merriam Company which is best known for publishing the Merriam-Webster dictionaries. The saying is ascribed to generic librarians [BWS1]:

Asa G. Baker quotes a librarian’s distinction between plagiarism and research: “If you wrote a paper and  quoted without credit from a single book, it would be plagiarism; but if you quoted from three or four,  it would be research.”

Asa George Baker was chairman of the board of directors and former president of the G. & C. Merriam Company. However, the editor of Word Study quickly updates this information in an issue in 1939 and credits Mizner instead of librarians [BWS2]:

According to Frank Case’s Tales of a Wayward Inn, the saying quoted in a recent issue of WORD STUDY originated with Wilson Mizner, and ran as follows: “When you take stuff from one writer, it’s plagiarism, but when you take it from many writers, it’s called research.”

Top researcher Barry Popik found a 1941 newspaper article by a Hollywood columnist that attributes the quotation to Bob Oliver [BLA]:

Bob Oliver suggests a simple rule-of-thumb for would-be movie scenarists.

“Just remember,” says he, “if you steal from one man, it’s plagiarism.  If you steal from several, it’s research.”

An extensive multi-part profile of Wilson Mizner in the New Yorker in 1942 credits him with the quip though the wording differs a bit from the version attributed to Mizner in 1938 [WMNY]:

If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research.

Tom Lehrer, the recording artist and satirist, released a song in the 1950s titled Lobachevsky that contains the following lyrics [LTL]:

Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,

So don’t shade your eyes,

But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize -

Only be sure always to call it please ‘research’.

In 1974 a book review in the Los Angeles Times discusses Tom Lehrer’s song [LAL]:

.. reminds me of Tom Lehrer’s song about the Great Lobachevsky. One axiom of the mythical mathematician’s scholarly work was that if you steal from one source you are committing plagiarism; if you steal from two sources, you are providing documentation; and if you steal from three or more sources, it is–presto–”original research.”

The Lobachevsky referred to in the song is not mythical. Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky was a renowned Russian mathematician, but Lehrer was not being critical. The Wikipedia entry for Lobachevsky cites the liner notes of a 2010 album by Lehrer and states [WLOB]:

According to Lehrer, the song is “not intended as a slur on [Lobachevsky's] character” and the name was chosen “solely for prosodic reasons”.

The joke is attributed to comedian Steven Wright at the MustShareJokes website [WMSJ]. The saying is also credited to Wright in a 2008 book in the field of Academic Medicine [WPM]. The attribution to Wright is recognized and questioned at the WikiAnswers website [WAW].

In conclusion, the earliest attribution found by QI names Wilson Mizner as the creator of this adage. The lead-time when publishing a book can be long, and QI thinks this cite logically occurs before magazine or newspaper citations in 1938. Joseph Cummings Chase also uses a version of the saying in a magazine essay in 1938. QI thanks you for your question and compliments you on your originality.

[FCWM] 1938, Tales of a Wayward Inn by Frank Case, Juniors and the Jani, Page 248, Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York. (Google Books snippet view; Verified on paper Fourth Printing 1939) link

[CJCC] 1938 October, The Commentator magazine, “Do You Call THAT Art?” by Joseph Cummings Chase, Page 26, Column 2, Payson Publishing, Inc., New York. (Google Books snippet view; Verified via image scan; Thanks to Stephen Goranson for obtaining scans of this article via Interlibrary Loan) link

[CSFN] 1938 September 29, Santa Fe New Mexican, “It’s An Art”, Page 4, Column 1, Santa Fe, New Mexico. (NewspaperArchive)

[PW] 1938, Professional Writing by Stanley Vestal (pseudonym of Walter S. Campbell), Pages 88-89, The Macmillan Company, New York. (Google Books snippet view; Verified on paper in Third Printing 1944) link

[BWS1] 1938 December, Word Study, editor Max J. Herzberg, Random Comment, Page 4, Volume XIV, Number 3, G. & C. Merriam Company, Springfield, Massachusetts (Google Books snippet; Verified on paper) link

[BWS2] 1939 February, Word Study edited by Max J. Herzberg, Random Comment, Page 1, Column 2, Volume XIV, Number 4, G. & C. Merriam Company – Springfield, Massachusetts. (Google Books snippet; Verified on paper) link

[BLA] 1941 March 17, Los Angeles Times Jimmie Fidler in Hollywood, Page 24, Los Angeles, California. (ProQuest)

[WMNY] 1942 October 10, The New Yorker, “Profiles: Legend of a Sport – Part I” by Alva Johnston, Page 21, Column 3, F-R Publishing Corporation , New York. (New Yorker online archive)

[LTL] Songs by Tom Lehrer, Lobachevsky: Side 1: Track 6. Performance of Lobachevsky by Tom Lehrer on YouTube. link Wikipedia entry for Songs by Tom Lehrer. link

[LAL] 1974 August 18, Los Angeles Times, Book Talk: A Leaf From History’s Book by Digby Diehl, Page O65, Los Angeles, California. (ProQuest)

[WLOB] Wikipedia entry for Nikolai Lobachevsky: “Liner notes, “The Tom Lehrer Collection”, Shout! Factory, 2010.” (Not verified by QI; Based on footnote in Wikipedia; Accessed 2010 September 20) link

[WMSJ] Steven Wright, MustShareJokes website (Accessed 2010 September 19) link

[WPM] 2008, Pearls for Leaders in Academic Medicine by Emery A. Wilson, Jay A. Perman, D. Kay Clawson, Page 28, Springer, New York. (Google Books preview) link

[WAW] Who said: To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism to steal from many is research? Wiki.Answers website (Accessed 2010 September 19) link