IDEA QUOTES
quotations about ideas
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All great ideas are dangerous.
OSCAR WILDE, De Profundis
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"
What we need is hatred. From it our ideas are born.
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
Ideas are the pulses of the soul.
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
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
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
VICTOR HUGO, Histoire d'un crime
The ideas of people in general are not raised higher than the roofs of the houses. All their interests extend over the earth's surface in a layer of that thickness. The meeting-house steeple reaches out of their sphere.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, American Note-Books, 1836
America is not just a country, it's an idea.
With the growth of knowledge our ideas must from time to time be organized afresh. The change takes place usually in accordance with new maxims as they arise, but it always remains provisional.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
An idea ran back and forward in his head like a blind man knocking over the solid furniture.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, Notebooks
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
Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away.
BARACK OBAMA, speech, Jun. 4, 2009
Ideas are born in chaos.
To live in a great idea means to treat the impossible as though it were possible. It is just the same with a strong character; and when an idea and a character meet, things arise which fill the world with wonder for thousands of years.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Ideas are your children, for you have no others. Ideas are your contribution to posterity.
SIMON MAWER, The Gospel of Judas
One who accepts the general ideas of his time gets along smoothest, but he does the least for progress.
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
The collision of a great man with a great idea strikes fire in dry flax.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY, Keystones of Thought
Tyrannies are overthrown by ideas. Armies are defeated by ideas. Nations, and Time itself, are overmatched by ideas.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Whoso shrinks from ideas ends by having nothing but sensations.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
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.
NEIL GAIMAN, "Where do you get your ideas?"
As a rule, with me an unfinished [idea] is a thing that might as well be rubbed out. It’s better, if there’s something good in it that I might make use of elsewhere, to leave it at the back of my mind than on paper in a drawer. If I leave it in a drawer it remains the same thing but if it’s in the memory it becomes transformed into something else.
T. S. ELIOT, The Paris Review, Spring-Summer, 1959
No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, The Crack-Up
You can't kill ideas with a sword.
DAVID WEBER, By Schism Rent Asunder
Wide acceptance of an idea is not proof of its validity.
DAN BROWN, The Lost Symbol
An idea is like a cold germ: sooner or later someone always catches it.
STEPHEN KING, Under the Dome
Ideas lead revolutions.
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