The Art of Propagating Opinion
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part X - The Position of a HomoUnius Libri
Context: Ideas and opinions, like living organisms, have a normal rate of growth which cannot be either checked or forced beyond a certain point. They can be held in check more safely than they can be hurried. They can also be killed; and one of the surest ways to kill them is to try to hurry them.
“You cannot force ideas. Successful ideas are the result of slow growth.”
Bell Telephone Talk (1901)
Context: You cannot force ideas. Successful ideas are the result of slow growth. Ideas do not reach perfection in a day, no matter how much study is put upon them.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Alexander Graham Bell 20
scientist and inventor known for his work on the telephone 1847–1922Related quotes
Individual Liberty (1926), Passive Resistance
Context: The idea that Anarchy can be inaugurated by force is as fallacious as the idea that it can be sustained by force. Force cannot preserve Anarchy; neither can it bring it. In fact, one of the inevitable influences of the use of force is to postpone Anarchy. The only thing that force can ever do for us is to save us from extinction, to give us a longer lease of life in which to try to secure Anarchy by the only methods that can ever bring it. But this advantage is always purchased at immense cost, and its attainment is always attended by frightful risk. The attempt should be made only when the risk of any other course is greater.
“The foundation of liberty is the idea of growth.”
Source: Liberalism (1911), Chapter VI, The Heart Of Liberalism, p. 66.
As quoted in Modern Political Ideologies, Third Edition, Andrew Vincent, West Sussex, UK, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, p. 156
“[…] beer results in ideas, which results in new code.”
[slashdot, http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/00/12/11/1455210/theo-de-raadt-responds]
"Ideas are, in truth, forces. Infinite, too, is the power of personality. A union of the two always makes history." — Henry James (1879-1947), Charles W. Eliot (1930), 2 vol. This namesake was James' nephew, the son of William James. His life of Eliot earned him the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
Misattributed