Baron Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937), renowned as the founder of the International Olympic Committee which revived the Olympic Games, was also a bit of a plagiarist.
His Olympic creed was a pinch from what he heard at a church service for the Olympians during the 1908 London Olympics Bishop Ethelbert Talbot of Philadelphia in St Paul's Cathedral closed his sermon by saying: "The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to participate..." Mightily impressed, De Coubertin borrowed those words for the Olympic Creed:
"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well."
As with the athletes he was seeking to motivate, the baron did not rest on his laurels.
