Emerson’s goal with this essay is to show that rarely does a thing like true originality exist. He states that “All minds quote" and that creativity is actually appropriation of prior experience, words, or ideas. Even writing and ideas work in cycles; therefore, even great philosophers gained their ideas from somewhere. We quote and fill in with our own voice the gaps of thought. Writing is like a the process of consumerism: there is lending, borrowing, consuming, production from goods. Power in words comes from the assimilation of others' words. He acknowledges that it's still good to acknowledge sources and great minds like Plato; however, the more truthful the statement, the less people care about authorship (a statement with which Plato