Once a copy cat always a copycat – Abdallah Alaili

While writing the blog post: Copycats can’t innovate, i made the statement “Once a copy cat always a copycat“. After looking this statement up online to see if anyone did beat me to it, i can proudly claim it as a quote by me :D.

So to give you more context, i will quote my previous post:

I have been keeping my eye on one of these copycats. A Chinese fintech CEO, his success came as a result of copying a successful firm he worked in. Then his firm became so big and successful that it outshone the original company. But once a copy cat always a copycat. This billionaire CEO, instead of innovating and creating new products and services, he started copying everything in his industry, things that really have no importance. I was wondering, why would such a billionaire spend millions and lock the time of his engineers on such projects with no importance. Then, it hit me, he doesn’t know better, he does not have an innovator mind, he just knows how to copy what others do.

In reality this statement, follows the structure of popular idioms : Once a … Always a …
ex:
Once a cheater, always a cheater.
Once a thief, always a thief.
Once a criminal, always a criminal.

Obviously the idioms can not be generalised, and they tend to be more wrong than true. But, it is worth noting, and making such statements, because they do happen to be true quite often.