influence or ripoff?
Out of context: Reply #23
- Started
- Last post
- 62 Responses
- Amicus0
From a Yahoo Answers page
Q. 'Einstein: "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." Is this a wise piece of advice?'
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker
Doctor Why'As with most pithy advice, it depends a lot on how you interpret it.
I am reminded of a saying sometimes attributed to Pablo Picasso: "Good artists borrow; great artists steal." If you ask yourself how that can be true, a way presents itself. A great artist can take an idea that was someone else's and make it so fully better and his own that the original idea looks like the cheap copy.
I think Einstein's quote may have been in the same light. He's saying that a great person isn't someone who has no sources - who derives everything himself - he's one who makes the sources unimportant. Certainly that was true for his own work... he performed no experiments nor invented new kinds of math. But he didn't need to credit those others because he took those existing ideas and used them in a way nobody had before. Pretty much the very definition of creativity.'