IDEA QUOTES II
quotations about ideas
You can't kill ideas with a sword.
DAVID WEBER
By Schism Rent Asunder
All great ideas are dangerous.
OSCAR WILDE
De Profundis
There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas (and because it constantly produces them) that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
Corriere della sera, Nov. 1978
Speculation and the exploration of ideas beyond what we know with certainty are what lead to progress.
LISA RANDALL
New York Times, Sep. 18, 2005
An idea that is not expressed, that is not or cannot be communicated, is no idea at all.
REINHARD BENDIX
Truth and Ideology
Behind this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea ... and ideas are bulletproof.
ALAN MOORE
V for Vendetta
If the ancients left us ideas, to our credit be it spoken that we moderns are building houses for them -- structures which neither Plato nor Archimedes had dreamed possible.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
JOHN STEINBECK
interview with Robert van Gelder, Apr. 1947
One can lose a good idea by not writing it down, yet by losing it one can have it: it nourishes other asides it knows nothing of, would not recognize itself in, yet when the negotiations are terminated, speaks in the acts of that progenitor, and does recognize itself, is grateful for not having done so earlier.
JOHN ASHBERY
Flow Chart
You grow ravenous. You run fevers. You know exhilarations. You can't sleep at night, because your beast-creature ideas want out and turn you in your bed. It is a grand way to live.
RAY BRADBURY
Zen in the Art of Writing
I get lots of ideas when the lights go out at night and it gets very quiet. Sometimes they come when I first lie down to sleep; other times I wake up with an idea racing through my mind. But regardless of when an idea comes, I have made it a habit to get out of bed and write the idea down before it disappears into my dreams. You should do the same.
ZIG ZIGLAR
Embrace the Struggle: Living Life on Life's Terms
You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas.
TERENCE MCKENNA
"Linking the Past, Present and the Future of Psychedelics", February 2-3, 1991
History, if it has taught us anything at all, has taught us that the strange ideas we deride today will one day be our celebrated truths.
DAN BROWN
The Lost Symbol
Ideas are more powerful than guns.
TONY BENN
interview, Wikinews, August 8, 2007
It has to be the right idea and have good taste, but the execution and delivery are what's key.
SERGEY BRIN
interview, The Guardian, June 17, 2009
One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
We change ideas like neckties.
EMIL CIORAN
A Short History of Decay
Almost everyone who has had an idea that's somewhat revolutionary or wildly successful was first told they're insane.
LARRY PAGE
CNNMoney interview, May 1, 2008
We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.
KURT VONNEGUT
Breakfast of Champions
That's the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.
RAY BRADBURY
Zen in the Art of Writing