Plagiarist

[pljames]

I feel I am a plagiarist. I take from others there beliefs and add my understanding and accept it as mine. My excuse is to understand there way of understanding and adapt it to my understanding.  It would seem I took from the English language what I could understand to be understood. I adopted what I understood and made it mine.Thats a plagiarist. What causes me to do that? pljames

Thought,
 I should follow what they belief without questioning because if I adopt there understanding and change it I have misrepresented there beliefs. And that is wrong. But how do I learn from them and form my on opinion without plagiarising there belief?  The word opinion comes to mine. pljames

[grasshopper]

My understanding of plagiarism is that it entails lifting entire passages of someone else's writing, and publishing them in a public realm WITHOUT crediting the original author.

If you find yourself in general agreement with the essential premise of opinions expressed by writers other than yourself, then you are no more guilty of plagiarism than would be a guitarist whose phrasing echoes that of other musicians either living or dead, without obvious note-for-note replication of known recordings.  

[pljames]

Thanks you've made my day. pljames