Leszek Kołakowski, Preface to The Presence of Myth (1972):
I venture to say – and in this I merely follow many brave masters of the art of philosophy – that I am simply making available the existing inheritance. This enables me to refrain from a precise division between thoughts that are mine and those that are others', especially since this is an impossible task; for it is impossible to remember all those to whom one owes something, and in the final analysis it would assuredly turn out that whatever we have, we owe to others.