Words, Just words: 4 Famous cases of Plagiarism

With the recent Obama plagiarism flap dominating the media, we figured it'd be a good time to revisit a few other famous cases of word borrowing.

1. Martin Luther King Jr: I Heard a Dream (Which Subsequently Became My Dream)

When writing about the Lord God Almighty, one is generally well advised not to break the eighth commandment, but Martin Luther King Jr. managed to turn out pretty well in spite of his tendency to borrow others' words without attribution. King received a doctorate in systematic theology from Boston University in 1955 on the strength of a dissertation comparing the theologians Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Weiman. In a 1989"“1990 review, though, the university discovered that King had plagiarized about a third of his thesis from a previous student's dissertation. And although it was closer to liberal adaptation than outright plagiarism, King's seminal "I Have a Dream" speech was, well, let's say "inspired by" a speech that an African American preacher named Archibald Carey Jr. gave to the Republican National Convention in 1952.

2. Alex Haley and the Roots of Roots

3. Stendhal: The Politician's Plagiarist

4. John Milton: In His Own Words

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