You may not otherwise copy or transmit the contents of this website either electronically or in hard copies. You may not alter the content of this website in any manner. If you are interested in using the contents of this website in any manner except as described above, please contact "Wayne Weber" at "www.brokeboats.com" for information on licensing.

Individual documents published by "Broke Boats" on the World Wide Web may contain other proprietary notices and copyright information specific to that individual document. Nothing contained herein shall be construed as conferring by implication, estoppel or otherwise any license or right under any patent, trademark or other property right of "Broke Boats" or any third party. Except as expressly provided above nothing contained herein shall be construed as conferring any license or right under any copyright or other property right of "Broke Boats" or any third party. Note that any product, process, or technology in this document may be the subject of other intellectual property rights reserved by "Broke Boats" and may not be licensed here under.

Substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing. . . . It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone, or any other Important thing-- and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite--that is all he did.

In 1886 I read Dr. Holmes's poems, in the Sandwich Islands. A year and a half later I stole his dedication, without knowing it, and used it to dedicate my "Innocents Abroad" with.

Ten years afterward I was talking with Dr. Holmes about it. He was not an ignorant ass--no, not he; . . . and so when I said, "I know now where I stole, but who did you steal it from?"

He said, "I don't remember; I only know I stole it from somebody, because I have never originated anything altogether myself, nor met anybody who had."
Mark Twain
-from a letter to Anne Macy. Reprinted in Anne Sullivan Macy, The Story Behind Helen Keller (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, and Co., 1933)

That being said:
Drop me a line and let me know if you want to use some of the information on this website in your work and I'll send my permission. Wayne