Many of the images found on this site are used under a Creative Commons license. While CC is a great concept, it’s not perfect in practice due to the ability for those not holding rights to post content and label it with a CC license. If you are the legal copyright holder of works found on this site which are not CC licensed or do not contain the appropriate attribution, please notify me and I will remove the content or correct the attribution.
In some cases, literary works have been referenced without attribution. These instances occur only for uncopyrighted works or where permission is expressly granted. I am generally opposed to plagiarism, but find that citations may destroy readers’ ability to evaluate words on their own merit due to cultural bias. If the thought is valuable, it shouldn’t matter who had the thought. This is the classic “poisoning the well” logical fallacy.
Take the following examples:
“Words build bridges into unexplored regions.”
This is intriguing and sounds succinctly wise. If I read this quote, I’d probably guess it was spoken by Shakespeare, Maya Angelou, or maybe LeVar Burton on an episode of “Reading Rainbow”
Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex.
Who said this? Susan B. Anthony? Janeane Garofalo? Ralph Nader?
Unfortunately for those quotes, they are attributed to two of the biggest boogeymen (I’m not arguing against their status as such) in Western culture. Yes, the apparently insightful promotion of literature is from Adolf Hitler. The quote hinting at universally equal rights for women is from Karl Marx. These may be extreme examples, but they illustrate my point nicely.
