IDEA QUOTES V

quotations about ideas

Ideas should be neutral. But man animates them with his passions and folly. Impure and turned into beliefs, they take on the appearance of reality. The passage from logic is consummated. Thus are born ideologies, doctrines, and bloody farce.

EMIL CIORAN

A Short History of Decay


The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

"The Crack Up"

Tags: F. Scott Fitzgerald


Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

HOWARD H. AIKEN

attributed, Portraits in Silicon


Whenever we accept an idea as authority instead of as instrument, an idol is set up. We worship the plough, and not the fruit.

WALTER LIPPMAN

A Preface to Politics

Tags: Walter Lippmann


Libraries were full of ideas--perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.

SARAH J. MAAS

Throne of Glass


Ideas mutate, and spread; they change their hosts as much as their hosts change them.

BERNARD BECKETT

Genesis

Tags: Bernard Beckett


The mere presentation of an idea, unless we are careful about it, or unless there is within some unusual resistance, makes us believe it; and this is why the belief of others adds to our belief so quickly, for no ideas seem so very clear as those inculcated on us from every side.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Physics and Politics

Tags: Walter Bagehot


Great trees are of slow growth; and great ideas have to be before the mind and in the heart a long time before they are sufficiently familiar to have the face of friends.

REUEN THOMAS

Thoughts for the Thoughtful

Tags: Reuen Thomas


I expose myself to life, and from that, ideas come as a surprise. I totally dismiss the ones that are pleasant and easy. I'm only interested in the ones that really disturb me and that I get obsessed about. They're what bring me to new territory.

MARINA ABRAMOVIC

"Life's Work: An Interview with Marina Abramovic", Harvard Business Review, November 2016


A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense. Power runs with ideas that only the crazy would draw into doubt. The "taken for granted" is the test of sanity; "what everyone knows" is the line between us and them.

LAWRENCE LESSIG

The Future of Ideas


Every idea appears at first as a strange visitor, and when it begins to be realized, it is hardly distinguishable from fantasy.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe

Tags: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


In our day there are no longer any ideas, or they are scarcer than hens' teeth.

LOUIS ARAGON

Treatise on Style


What we need is hatred. From it our ideas are born.

JEAN GENET

The Blacks

Tags: Jean Genet


It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Dispossessed


The collision of a great man with a great idea strikes fire in dry flax.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

Tags: Austin O'Malley


Ideas generate ideas; like a potato, which, cut in pieces, reproduces itself in a multiplied form.

ELIZA COOK

Diamond Dust

Tags: Eliza Cook


If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.

THOMAS MANN

Tonio Kröger

Tags: Thomas Mann


A man is not clever simply because he has many ideas, just as he is not necessarily a good general because he has many soldiers.

CHAMFORT

The Cynic's Breviary

Tags: Sebastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort


An idea is like a cold germ: sooner or later someone always catches it.

STEPHEN KING

Under the Dome

Tags: Stephen King


I try not to do anything that's too close to what I've done before. And the nice thing is we have a big universe here. It's filled with new ideas. All you have to do is grab them.

STAN LEE

Brandweek, May 2000, May 2000

Tags: Stan Lee