282 Ideas Quotes

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

An idea is salvation by imagination.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That everything great that has ever happened to humanity since the beginning, has begun with a single thought in someone's mind and if anyone of us is capable of such a great thought then all of us has the same capacity, capability, because we are all the same.

A profound thought is in a constant state of becoming; it adopts the experience of a life and assumes its shape. Likewise, a man's sole creation is strengthened in its successive and multiple aspects: his works. One after another they complement one another, correct or overtake one another, contradict one another, too. If something brings creation to an end, it is not the victorious and illusory cry of the blinded artist: 'I have said everything,' but the death of the creator which closes his experiences and the book of his genius. That effort, that superhuman consciousness are not necessarily apparent to the reader. There is no mystery in human creation. Will performs this miracle. But at least there is no true creation without a secret. To be true, a succession of works can be but a series of approximations of the same thought. But it is possible to conceive of another type of creator proceeding by juxtaposition. Their words may seem to be devoid of inter-relations, to a certain degree, they are contradictory. But viewed all together, they resume their natural groupings.

Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. Ch. 14

There is no prescribed route to follow to arrive at a new idea. You have to make the intuitive leap. But the difference is that once you've made the intuitive leap you have to justify it by filling in the intermediate steps. In my case, it often happens that I have an idea, but then I try to fill in the intermediate steps and find that they don't work, so I have to give it up

Bakunin: Act first! The ideas will follow, and if not - well, it's progress

Einstein was a giant. His head was in the clouds, but his feet were on the ground. Those of us who are not so tall have to choose!

If you have an apple and I have an apple, and we exchange apples, we both still only have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea, and we exchange ideas, we each now have two ideas.

Dream as big as you want it's the cheapest thing you'll ever do

After these conversations with Tagore some of the ideas that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense. That was a great help for me.

The great novelists are philosopher-novelists whom write in images instead of arguments.

If I give you a penny, you will be one penny richer and I'll be one penny poorer. But if I give you an idea, you will have a new idea, but I shall still have it, too.

Discussion: 'Try to keep your mind open to new ideas and never let offense stand in the way of discourse, for discourse and the exchange of ideas is the only motion by which the chaff is separated from the wheat in the world of ideas.'

I think they've always gone on. I've gotten some irate letters from oldsters saying 'We did this in the 1930s. You didn't invent anything.' And I'm like, 'Gramps, you should have put a name on it and sold it, because that's all I did.'

Cyrano distills the most radical ideas of his time into a potent literary liqueur.

We were taking our inspiration from the high and the low; the biggest ideas, and the dumbest ideas.

It's interesting when a book comes to you. It comes to you in sort of flashes and you don't quite understand how they connect.

Thinking with me is like looking for a person whose address I don't know. I stand on a street corner all day long waiting for him to pass by. Certainly there are more efficient ways of locating a person whose address you don't know. But if you have a whole lifetime to wait and enjoy watching things go by, then waiting on street corners is as good a method as any. If you don't find the person you are looking for, you might meet someone else.

As a full-time longshoreman I am necessarily more a scribbler than a writer. But I am also so by inclination. The writing I can enjoy is the sketching of an idea in a few dozen words - two hundred at most. Elaboration and expansion are for me hard going. An article of several thousand words becomes inevitably a mosaic of ideas - a series of ideas stuck together.

Conservatives feel instinctively that it is new ideas more than anything else that cause change. But, from its point of view rightly, conservatism fears new ideas because it has no distinctive principles of its own to oppose them; and, by its distrust of theory and its lack of imagination concerning anything except that which experience has already proved, it deprives itself of the weapons needed in the struggle of ideas. Unlike liberalism, with its fundamental belief in the long-range power of ideas, conservatism is bound by the stock of ideas inherited at a given time. And since it does not really believe in the power of argument, its last resort is generally a claim to superior wisdom, based on some self-arrogated superior quality.

Connected with the conservative distrust if the new and the strange is its hostility to internationalism and its proneness to a strident nationalism. Here is another source of its weakness in the struggle of ideas. It cannot alter the fact that the ideas which are changing our civilization respect no boundaries. But refusal to acquaint one's self with new ideas merely deprives one of the power of effectively countering them when necessary. The growth of ideas is an international process, and only those who fully take part in the discussion will be able to exercise a significant influence. It is no real argument to say that an idea is un-American, or un-German, nor is a mistaken or vicious ideal better for having been conceived by one of our compatriots.

I have scattered seeds of ideas on almost every page which, if they fall on the right soil, may grow into chapters and even whole dissertations.

To say something memorable before you die you either have to say something memorable and then completely shut up until you die or you have to say something memorable once every five minutes.

'During Alfven's visit he gave a lecture at the University of Chicago, which was attended by Enrico Fermi. As Alfven described his work, Fermi nodded his head and said, 'Of course.' The next day the entire world of physics said. 'Oh. of course.''

Ideas came swarming through her, and like many people who labour in the obsession of solitude, she lacked the detachment to challenge them.

Je prefere la pensee a l'action, une idee a une affaire, la contemplation au mouvement.

Pierre l'Ermite, Calvin et Robespierre, chacun a trois cents ans de distance, ces trois Picards ont ete, politiquement parlant, des leviers d'Archimede. C'etait a chaque epoque une pensee qui recontrait un point d'appel dans les interets et chez les hommes.

Les idees devorent les siecles comme les hommes sont devores par leurs passions. Quand l'homme sera gueri, l'humanite se guerira peut-etre.

You know, in all honesty, we all have our favorite forms. I would have to say, as a young person tasting material, O. Henry, with all those weird, paradoxical twists, really hung me up. The world's full of ideas.

If you like business, you have to like GE. If you like ideas, you have to love GE. This is a place where ideas can flow freely from and through more than 20 separate businesses and more than 300,000 employees. Boundaryless behavior allows ideas to come from anywhere. We formalize our freewheeling style in a series of operating meetings that blend into one another.

Delightful task! to rear the tender thought, To teach the young idea how to shoot.

A penny for your thought.

Didn't I once observe that there is nothing new under the sun?

Is it possible that seemingly incredible geniuses like Bach and Shakespeare and Einstein were not in fact superhuman, but simply plagiarists, copying great stuff from the future?

Linus Pauling was not always right in his ideas. But my belief is that, in most cases, if somebody is always right in his ideas you find that he does not have much to say. It is an expression of somebody's fertility that he does produce quite a number of ideas, and I think Linus Pauling's score is pretty high... I do not think, as I said earlier, that it is right to discuss the impact of Linus Pauling on molecular biology. Rather, he was one of the founders of molecular biology. It was not that it existed in some way, and he simply made a contribution. He was one of the founders who got the whole discipline going.

Men may move mountains, but ideas move men.

Par-dela ce village, d'autres villages, par-dela cette abbaye, d'autres abbayes, par-dela cette forteresse, d'autres forteresses. Et dans chacun de ces chateaux d'idees, de ces masures d'opinions superposes aux masures de bois et aux chateaux de pierre, la vie emmure les fous et ouvre un pertuis aux sages. (Le Grand Chemin, p. 564)

Concepts are a provisional affair. (1951)

Critical power...tends to make an intellectual situation of which the creative power can profitably avail itself. It tends to establish an order of ideas, if not absolutely true, yet true by comparison with that which it displaces; to make the best ideas prevail.

There is the world of ideas and there is the world of practice; the French are often for suppressing the one and the English the other; but neither is to be suppressed.

It is important, therefore, to hold fast to this: that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life - to the question: How to live.

All that individuals can do is to clarify, propagate and work out ideas corresponding to the popular instinct, and, what is more, to contribute their incessant efforts to revolutionary organization of the natural power of the masses - but nothing else beyond that.

I once read somewhere that it's a sign of enlightenment to be able to hold two contradicting ideas in your head at the same time.

If you are a man of learning, fight in the skull, kill ideas and create new ones. God hides in every idea as in every cell of flesh. Smash the idea, set him free! Give him another, a more spacious idea in which to dwell.

Like when you wake up in the middle of the night with a very important idea from a dream, and you writed it down and then in the morning it says 'Not the food! The dog!' and you have no idea what that could possibly mean or why you once thought it was important.

You need to remember that what you're dealing with here is the ideas I had when I was 16 that I'm putting in my fiction now.

Poor old Spotty Muldoon. He thought of splitting the atom the other day. If only he could have had the idea about thirty years ago, he'd have made a bloody fortune.

Ideas are somewhat like babies--they are born small, immature, and shapeless. They are promise rather than fulfillment. In the innovative company executives do not say, 'This is a damn-fool idea.' Instead they ask, 'What would be needed to make this embryonic, half-baked, foolish idea into something that makes sense, that is an opportunity for us?' -- The Frontiers of Management (1986)

Olympian bards who sung Divine Ideas below, Which always find us young, And always keep us so.

The best university that can be recommended to a man of ideas is the gauntlet of the mobs.

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. No hope so bright but is the beginning of its own fulfilment.

Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind and when the same thought occurs in another man, it is the key to that era.

At 7 a.m. all my voices start talking inside my head, and when it reaches a certain pitch I jump out and trap them before they're gone. Or I shower and then the voices talk. You solve problems not by thinking directly of them but allowing them to ferment in their own time.

[M]uch of the world's population could be annihilated on account of religious ideas that belong on the same shelf with Batman.[2]

And weave fine cobwebs, fit for skull That's empty when the moon is full; Such as take lodgings in a head That's to be let unfurnished.

I respect Kirkpatrick both for his sponges and for his numinous nummulosphere. It is easy to dismiss a crazy theory with laughter that debars any attempt to understand a man's motivation-and the nummulosphere is a crazy theory. I find that few men of imagination are not worth my attention. Their ideas may be wrong, even foolish, but their methods often repay a close study. [:] The different drummer often beats a fruitful tempo.

We often think, naively, that missing data are the primary impediments to intellectual progress-just find the right facts and all problems will dissipate. But barriers are often deeper and more abstract in thought. We must have access to the right metaphor, not only to the requisite information. Revolutionary thinkers are not, primarily, gatherers of facts, but weavers of new intellectual structures.

'When intellectual formulations are treated simply by relegating them to the past and permitting the simple passage of time to substitute for development, the suspicion is justified that such formulations have not really been mastered, but rather they are being suppressed.'

Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules.

You can't conquer an idea with an army.

This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. it's for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you've done is give it a knock like knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly. What we're trying to do is to write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might...travel.