Selected ideas quotes

1. The Here-and-Now demands attention, is more present to us. We dismiss the inner world of our ideas as less important, although most of our immediate physical reality originated only in the mind. The TV, sofa, clock and room, the whole civilisation that contains them once were nothing save ideas.

2. Ideas, unlike solid structures, do not perish. They remain immortal, immaterial and everywhere, like all Divine things. Ideas are a golden, savage landscape that we wander unaware, without a map. Be careful: in the last analysis, reality may be exactly what we think it is.

3. Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.

4. I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.

5. Just to prove that even the silliest idea can be pursued to its illogical conclusion, Legal Realism spawned Critical Legal Studies.

6. A book is simply the container of an idea-like a bottle; what is inside the book is what matters.

7. It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.

8. My mind contains many good ideas, but it's not always easy to squeeze one out.

9. You can never discard too many bad ideas.

10. In a democracy, every little wrong idea may grow up to become national policy.

11. Just when I nearly had the answer, I forgot the question.

12. I have just discovered the truth, and can't understand why everybody isn't eager to hear it.

13. It is pleasant to be admitted into the birth-chamber of a great idea destined to be translated into action.

14. Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

15. The well-meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me little different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have any merit.

16. The idea does not belong to the soul; it is the soul that belongs to the idea.

17. Nothing, believe me, nothing is more satisfying to me personally than getting a great idea and then beatin' it to death.

18. The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.

19. Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

20. Progress comes from finding better ways to do things. Don't be afraid of innovation. Don't be afraid of ideas that are not your own.

21. The beginning of thought is in disagreement - not only with others but also with ourselves.

22. Actual creativeness is a matter of moments. One has to piece together the minute grains to make a lump. And it is so easy to miss the momentary flashes, it is like sluicing in placer mining. He who lets the flakes float by has nothing to show for his trouble.

23. Some people have no original ideas because they do not think well enough of themselves to consider their ideas worth noticing and developing.

24. Ideas came with explosive immediacy, like an instant birth. Human thought is like a monstrous pendulum; it keeps swinging from one extreme to the other.

25. I never saw a contradiction between the ideas that sustain me and the ideas of that symbol, of that extraordinary figure, Jesus Christ.

26. An idea is salvation by imagination.

27. Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.

28. The quality of a play is the quality of its ideas.

29. American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism.

30. Nothing could bother me more than the way a thing goes dead once it has been said.

31. Many sensible things banished from high life find an asylum among the mob.

32. The best way to support dreams and stretch is to set apart small ideas with big potential, then give people positive role models and the resources to turn small projects into big businesses.

33. Getting every employee's mind into the game is a huge part of what a CEO job is all about. Taking everyone's best ideas and transferring them to others is the secret. There's nothing more important.

34. I love to deal with doctrines and events. The contests of men about men I greatly dislike.

35. Some people should just start ideas and other ones should carry them out.

36. My inspirations don't come from outer space, they just come to me. I have no idea why they come when they do.

37. Song ideas have come to me in the middle of interviews, in the shower, or while I'm writing another song.

38. When I want to play music, you've got to get me on tape or else it goes.

39. I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

40. The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.

41. : less real than such threats as a man with a gun, a woman with a knife, or a U.S. Senator with an idea.

42. Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.

43. The discussions of every age are filled with the issues on which its leading schools of thought differ. But the general intellectual atmosphere of the time is always determined by the views on which the opposing schools agree. They become the unspoken presuppositions of all thought, and common and unquestioningly accepted foundations on which all discussion proceeds.

44. It hinders the creative work of the mind if the intellect examines too closely the ideas as they pour in.

45. What makes our poetry so contemptible nowadays is its paucity of ideas. If you want to be read, invent. Who the Devil wouldn't like to read something new?

46. We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy - at least until we have become as clever as they are.

47. Ideas too are a life and a world.

48. Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

49. Where ideas are concerned, America can be counted on to do one of two things: take a good idea and run it completely into the ground, or take a bad idea and run it completely into the ground.

50. All great ideas are controversial, or have been at one time.

51. The main difference between me and other people who have amassed this kind of money is that I am primarily interested in ideas, and I don't have much personal use for money. But I hate to think what would have happened if I hadn't made money: My ideas would not have gotten much play.

52. It is foolish, generally speaking, for a philosopher to set fire to another philosopher in Smithfield Market because they do not agree in their theory of the universe. That was done very frequently in the last decadence of the Middle Ages, and it failed altogether in its object. But there is one thing that is infinitely more absurd and unpractical than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter, and this is done universally in the twentieth century, in the decadence of the great revolutionary period.

53. Can an idea - a notion as abstract as Relativism - produce by itself the effects alleged? cause all the harm, destroy all the lives and reputations? I am as far as anyone can be from denying the power of ideas in history, but the suggestion that a philosophy (as Relativism is often called) has perverted millions and debased daily life is on the face of it absurd. No idea working alone has ever demoralized society, and there have been plenty of ideas simpler and more exciting than Relativism.

54. We may convince others by our arguments; but we can only persuade them by their own.

55. Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?

56. Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory: nothing can come of nothing.

57. No ideas and the ability to express them- that's a journalist.

58. Why do I think that we, the intellectuals, are able to help? Simply because we, the intellectuals, have done the most terrible harm for thousands of years. Mass murder in the name of an idea, a doctrine, a theory, a religion - that is all our doing, our invention: the invention of the intellectuals. If only we would stop setting man against man - often with the best intentions - much would be gained. Nobody can say that it is impossible for us to stop doing this.

59. 'What's my philosophy? In a word, integral. And what on earth - or in heaven - do I mean by 'integral'? The dictionary meaning is fairly simple: 'comprehensive, balanced, inclusive, essential for completeness.' Short definition, tall order.

60. The free-thinking of one age is the common sense of the next.

61. You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.

62. The creative process is like music which takes root with extraordinary force and rapidity.

63. Yet a man may love a paradox, without losing either his wit or his honesty.

64. Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever.

65. Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

66. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

67. Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

68. Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.

69. There is in this world no real delight (excepting those of sensuality), but exchange of ideas in conversation.

70. That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.

71. Good scholars struggle to understand the world in an integral way (pedants bite off tiny bits and worry them to death). These visions of reality [:] demand our respect, for they are an intellectual's only birthright. They are often entirely wrong and always flawed in serious ways, but they must be understood honorably and not subjected to mayhem by the excision of patches.

72. One thought. fills immensity.

73. Did you think to kill me? There's no flesh and blood within this cloak to kill. There is only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof.

74. Ideas must be put to the test. That's why we make things, otherwise they would be no more than ideas. There is often a huge difference between an idea and its realisation. I've had what I thought were great ideas that just didn't work. Sometimes it's difficult to say if something has worked or not. Photography is a way of putting distance between myself and the work which sometimes helps me to see more clearly what it is that I have made.

75. It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas : If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you : On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.

76. I discuss with myself questions of politics, love, taste, or philosophy. I let my mind rove wantonly, give it free rein to follow any idea, wise or mad that may present itself. ... My ideas are my harlots.

77. 'What you have in your head, put it down on paper. The head is a fragile vessel.'

78. An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

79. To supply a thought is mental massage; but to evolve a thought of your own is an achievement. Thinking is a brain exercise-and no faculty grows save as it is exercised. [Pg. 64.]

80. Stronger than all the armies is an idea thats time has come.

81. Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind.

82. Ideas do not need weapons, if they can convince the great masses.

83. Ideas are invented only as correctives to the past. Through repeated rectifications of this kind one may hope to disengage an idea that is valid.

84. There's an element of truth in every idea that lasts long enough to be called corny.

85. All thoughts that mould the age begin Deep down within the primitive soul.

86. Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers. You can fill your life up with ideas and still go home lonely. All you really have that really matters are feelings. That's what music is to me.

87. As to the history of the revolution, my ideas may be peculiar, perhaps singular. What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected from 1760 - 1775, in the course of fifteen years, before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington.

88. There are single thoughts that contain the essence of the whole volume, single sentences that have the beauties of large work.

89. When people speak of ideas that revolutionize society, they do but express the fact that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created.

90. Keynes was a great economist. In every discipline, progress comes from people who make hypotheses, most of which turn out to be wrong, but all of which ultimately point to the right answer. Now Keynes, in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, set forth a hypothesis which was a beautiful one, and it really altered the shape of economics. But it turned out that it was a wrong hypothesis. That doesn't mean that he wasn't a great man!

91. A dynamic struggle goes on within a person between what he or she consciously thinks on the one hand and, on the other, some insight, some perspective that is struggling to be born. The insight is then born with anxiety, guilt, and the joy and gratification that is inseparable from the actualizing of a new idea or vision.

92. I seek a form that my style cannot discover, a bud of thought that wants to be a rose.

93. 'Basic truth about the colonies, Heaslop. Any time there's trouble, you can put it down to books. Too many of the wrong ideas getting into the heads of the wrong sorts of people. If ever the Empire comes to ruin, Heaslop, mark my words, the British publisher will be to blame.' [16]

94. Creative work, in geology and anywhere else, is interaction and synthesis: half-baked ideas from a barroom, rocks in the field, chains of thought from lonely walks, numbers squeezed from rocks in a laboratory, numbers from a calculator riveted to a desk, fancy equipment usually malfunctioning on expensive ships, cheap equipment in the human cranium, arguments before a roadcut.

95. Iconography becomes even more revealing when processes or concepts, rather than objects, must be depicted-for the constraint of a definite 'thing' cedes directly to the imagination. How can we draw 'evolution' or 'social organization,' not to mention the more mundane 'digestion' or 'self-interest,' without portraying more of a mental structure than a physical reality? If we wish to trace the history of ideas, iconography becomes a candid camera trained upon the scholar's mind.

96. Much has been said of Mahomet's propagating his Religion by the sword. It is no doubt far nobler what we have to boast of the Christian Religion, that it propagated itself peaceably in the way of preaching and conviction. Yet withal, if we take this for an argument of the truth or falsehood of a religion, there is a radical mistake in it. The sword indeed: but where will you get your sword! Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one. In one man's head alone, there it dwells as yet. One man alone of the whole world believes it; there is one man against all men. That he take a sword, and try to propagate with that, will do little for him. You must first get your sword! On the whole, a thing will propagate itself as it can. We do not find, of the Christian Religion either, that it always disdained the sword, when once it had got one.

97. Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour; a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

98. What is there in life except one's ideas. Good air, good friend, what is there in life? Is it ideas that I believe?

99. To name a thing is easy: the difficulty is to discern it before its appearance. In giving expression to the last stage of an idea, - an idea which permeates all minds, which to-morrow will be proclaimed by another if I fail to announce it to-day, - I can claim no merit save that of priority of utterance. Do we eulogize the man who first perceives the dawn? Yes: all men believe and repeat that equality of conditions is identical with equality of rights; that property and robbery are synonymous terms; that every social advantage accorded, or rather usurped, in the name of superior talent or service, is iniquity and extortion. All men in their hearts, I say, bear witness to these truths; they need only to be made to understand it.

100. Each work has to pass through these stages-ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.