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"Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats."
-Howard Aiken
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Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when it is the only idea we have.
-Henri Alban-Fournier, Libers-propos (1908-14)
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Ideas, as distinguished from events, are never unprecedented.
-Hannah Arendt
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A mediocre idea that guarantees enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one.
-Mary Kay Ash
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New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion, and perhaps somebody’s castle-roof perforated.
-Sarah Bernhardt, The Art of the Theatre, ch. 3, 1923
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An idea must not be condemned for being a little shy and incoherent; all new ideas are shy when introduced first among our old ones. We should have patience and see whether the incoherency is likely to wear off or to wear on, in which latter case the sooner we get rid of them the better.
-Samuel Butler
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Great ideas come into the world as quietly as doves. Perhaps then , if we listen attentively we shall hear, among the uproar of empires and nations, the faint fluttering of wings, the gentle stirrings of life and hope. Some will say this hope lies in a nation; others in a man. I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history. Each and every one, on the foundations of their own suffering and joy builds for all.
-Albert Camus
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Hang ideas! They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy!
-Joseph Conrad, Marlow, in Lord Jim, ch. 5, 1900
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"The people who oppose your ideas are inevitably those who represent the established order that your ideas will upset."
-Anthony D'Angelo
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In laying hands upon the sacred ark of absolute permanency, in treating the forms that had been regarded as types of fixity and perfection as originating and passing away, the Origin of Species introduced a mode of thinking that in the end was bound to transform the logic of knowledge, and hence the treatment of morals, politics, and religion.
-John Dewey
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Old ideas give way slowly; for they are more than abstract logical forms and categories, they are habits, predispositions, deeply ingrained attitudes of diversion and preference.
-John Dewey, The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy, 1909
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"You can kill a man but you can't kill an idea."
-Medgar Evers
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NARCISSUS:
A republican is a man who strives to create equality among all classes. At the core he's a man who believes in doing what's right.
GAIUS:
The trouble is defining exactly what 'right' is.
NARCISSUS:
We all know what right is, Senator.
COMMODUS:
I would say there's nothing more dangerous than a man who knows what 'right' is.
NARCISSUS:
The dangerous man, Caesar, is the man who doesn't care.
http://have-dog.com/gladiator/gladiator01.html
-David Franzoni, "Gladiator" (movie), 2000
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No idea is so antiquated that it was not once modern. No idea is so modern that it will not some day be antiquated... To seize the flying thought before it escapes us is our only touch with reality.
-Ellen Glasgow
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Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
-Johann von Goethe
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The mark of highest originality lies in the ability to develop a familiar idea so fruitfully that it would seem no one else would ever have discovered so much to be hidden in it.
-Johann von Goethe
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Don't express your ideas too clearly. Most people think little of what they understand, and venerate what they do not.
-Baltasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom [1647]
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"Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions."
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table, 1853
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There never was an idea started that woke up men out of their stupid indifference but its originator was spoken of as a crank.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
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A stand can be made against invasion by an army; no stand can be made against invasion by an idea.
[fr.: On resiste a l'invasion des armees; on ne resiste pas a l'invasion des idees]
-Victor Hugo, Histoire d'un Crime (written 1851-2, published 1877) pt. 5, sect 10
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Apart from the representational content of an idea there is another component: its force and vivacity, its impetus.
-David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature
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Often quoted in forms that correspond only loosely to Hugo's original words, for example: No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come. An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of a revelation.
-William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
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A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.
-John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Address Greenville N.C., February 8, 1963
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All ideas come from sensation or reflection.--Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from Experience; in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation, employed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring.
-John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690
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An age is called Dark, not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.
-James A. Michener
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"When I am...traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas flow best and most abundantly."
-Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
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If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.
-Alfred Nobel
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One of the most important reasons for living is to do something - live outside of yourself and put together an idea, an idea that you want to explore and then complete... Awaken your creative sensitivities!
-Jack Palance
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The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it.
-Blaise Pascal
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"The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas."
-Linus Pauling
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An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.
-Pablo Picasso, Quoted in: Jaime Sabartés, Picasso: portraits et souvenirs, ch. 7 (1946).
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People find ideas a bore because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf.
-Ezra Pound, Guide to Kulchur, pt. 1, sct. 1, ch. 5, 1938
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Everything worthwhile is a good idea, but did you ever notice there is more bad ideas that will work than there is good ones?
-Will Rogers
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We have some great ideas, but most of 'em come too late to do us any good.
-Will Rogers
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To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.
-Jean Rostand, Carnets d'un Biologiste (repr. in The Substance of Man, 1962; p. 181).
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It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas . . . If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you . . . On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.
-Carl Sagan
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"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral."
-Antoine De Saint-Exupery
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Catastrophes come when some dominant institution, swollen like a soap-bubble and still standing without foundations, suddenly crumbles at the touch of what may seem a word or an idea, but is really some stronger material force.
-George Santayana, Persons and Places: The Middle Span, 1945
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A new public opinion must be created privately and unobtrusively. The existing one is maintained by the press, by propaganda, by organization, and by financial and other influences which are at its disposal. The unnatural way of spreading ideas must be opposed by the natural one, which goes from man to man and relies solely on the truth of the thoughts and the hearer's receptiveness for new truth.
-Albert Schweitzer
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Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.
-Thomas Sowell
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Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.
-Josef Stalin, (attributed)
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New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion, and perhaps somebody’s castle-roof perforated.
-Henry David Thoreau, Letter, to Daniel Ricketson, in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 6, p. 312, Houghton Mifflin (1906)., August 18, 1857
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False ideals cannot be shattered by criticism. Right ideals must take up the battle against them.
-Franz Werfel
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The value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices.
-Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 1 [Lord Henry speaking], 1891
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An idea is salvation by imagination.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
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Books about Ideas
