IDEA QUOTES
quotations about ideas
The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Reflections
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
VICTOR HUGO
Histoire d'un crime
A powerful idea communicates some of its power to the man who contradicts it. Partaking of the universal community of minds, it infiltrates, grafts itself on to, the mind of him who it refutes, among other contiguous ideas, with the aid of which, counter-attacking, he complements and corrects it; so that the final verdict is always to some extent the work of both parties to a discussion.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
My weakness has always been to prefer the large intention of an unskilful artist to the trivial intention of an accomplished one: in other words, I am more interested in the high ideas of a feeble executant than in the high execution of a feeble thinker.
THOMAS HARDY
letter, Jul. 8, 1901
America is not just a country, it's an idea.
BONO
2004 PENN Address
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.
JOHN CAGE
Conversing with Cage
I've known people who had fantastic ideas, but who couldn't get the idea off the ground because they approached everything weakly. They thought that their ideas would somehow take off by themselves, or that just coming up with an idea was enough. Let me tell you something -- it's not enough. It will never be enough. You have to put the idea into action. If you don't have the motivation and the enthusiasm, your great idea will simply sit on top of your desk or inside your head and go nowhere.
DONALD TRUMP
Trump 101
Wide acceptance of an idea is not proof of its validity.
DAN BROWN
The Lost Symbol
Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
JR., Inspirational Quotes to Motivate
The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES
attributed, Engines of Creation
A man who ain't got ideas of his own should be mighty careful who he borrows 'em from.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Nothing, believe me, nothing is more satisfying to me personally than getting a great idea and then beatin' it to death.
DAVID LETTERMAN
Late Night with David Letterman, March 5, 1993
The problem is that the people with the most ridiculous ideas are always the people who are most certain of them.
BILL MAHER
The Decider, July 21, 2007
The idea enters the brain from the outside. It rearranges the furniture to make it more to its liking. It finds other Ideas already in residence, and picks fights or forms alliances. The alliances build new structures, to defend themselves against intruders. And then, whenever the opportunity arises, the Idea sends out its shock troops in search of new brains to infect. The successful Idea travels from mind to mind, claiming new territory, mutating as it goes. It's a jungle out there ... many ideas are lost. Only the strongest survive.
BERNARD BECKETT
Genesis
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.
GASTON BACHELARD
Fragments of a Poetics of Fire
Everyone sits in the prison of his own ideas; he must burst it open, and that in his youth, and so try to test his ideas on reality.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Cosmic Religion: With Other Opinions and Aphorisms
Whoso shrinks from ideas ends by having nothing but sensations.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
If those in charge of our society -- politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television -- can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.
HOWARD ZINN
Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology
We are far more the creatures of our ideas than of our circumstances.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE, Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
One who accepts the general ideas of his time gets along smoothest, but he does the least for progress.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts