“Ideas do matter and do have consequences.”
Six Pillars of Self-Esteem
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Nathaniel Branden 10
Canadian–American psychotherapist and writer 1930–2014Related quotes
“Ideas have consequences, and totally erroneous ideas are likely to have destructive consequences.”
More Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, & Morality (1993)
“Do you have ideas, or do ideas have you?”
Preface to The Right To Be Greedy (1983 edition)
Context: Egoism in its narrowest sense is a tautology, not a tactic. Adolescents of all ages who triumphantly trumpet that "everyone is selfish," as if they’d made a factual discovery about the world, only show that they literally don’t know what they’re talking about. Practical egoism must be something more, it must tell the egoist something useful about himself and other selves which will make a difference in his life (and, as it happens, theirs). My want, needs, desires, whims — call them what you will — extend the ego, which is my-self purposively acting, out where the other selves await me. If I deal with them, as the economists say, "at arm’s length," I can’t get as close as I need to for so much of what I want. At any rate, no "spook," no ideology is going to get in my way. Do you have ideas, or do ideas have you?
“When what came next didn’t matter, anybody could do anything. Nothing had consequences.”
Source: Abaddon's Gate (2013), Chapter 46 (p. 472)
“You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.”
Other
R. Rosen Life, p. 248, quoted in: Carl F Gethmann (2011) Lebenswelt und Wissenschaft. p. 139
“If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.”
Tim Minear, in Epiphany", episode 16 of season 2 of Angel; also mentioned in the DVD commentary for the Firefly episode, "Objects in Space".
Misattributed
“Conservatives have a problem with women. For that matter, all men do.”
The Cornell Review (1984), reported in Time (April 2005) and in Brainless: The Lies and Lunacy of Ann Coulter (2006) by Joe Maguire, p. 59.
1980s-90s
