Quotes about ideas and thoughts

page 13

“Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering.”

“I'm always so glad I have no idea what you're vacantly chatting about," said Jace. It fills me with a sense of peace and well-being.”

“What baffles me is the comfort people find in the idea that somebody dealt this mess. Blind and meaningless chance seems to me so much more congenial - or at least less horrible. Prove to me that there is a God and I will really begin to despair.”

“Sure, it was your idea and your fly, but he caught the big fish. Remember, fairness is a human idea largely unknown in nature.”

“I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise.”

“When you're a writer, the question people always ask you is, "Where do you get your ideas?" Writers hate this question. It's like asking Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, "Where do you get your leeches?" You don't get ideas. Ideas get you.”

“Andrea: "…. I think a dog is a great idea. I just never pictured you with a mutant poodle.”
Kate: “He isn’t a poodle. He’s a Doberman mix."
Andrea: “Aha. Keep telling yourself that.”

“There was beauty in the idea of freedom, but it was an illusion. Every human heart was chained by love.”

“Why do we call all our generous ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths?”

“Throughout history, people with new ideas—who think differently and try to change things—have always been called troublemakers.”

“The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.”

“If we humans are good at anything, it’s thinking we’ve got a terrific idea and going for it without acknowledging the potential consequences or our own ignorance.”

“Man is not a circle with a single center; he is an ellipse with two focii. Facts are one, ideas are the other.”

“"I've got a sort of idea," said Pooh at last, "but I don't suppose it's a very good one."
"I don't suppose it is either," said Eeyore.”

“I can offer you my life, though it is a short life. I can offer you my heart, though I have no idea how many beats it shall sustain. But I love you enough to hope the rest of my life-whatever its length-happy, by spending it with you.-Jem.”

“He was not bone and feather but a perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all”

“I'm afraid to hope but I can't help it, and the idea of hoping in this most hopeless of all places makes me want to cry.”

“Rest, nature, books, music…such is my idea of happiness.”

“That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.”

“What do they do to students at the University who eavesdrop?” Bast asked curiously.
“I haven’t the slightest idea. I was never caught. I think making you sit and listen to the rest of my story should be punishment enough.”

“Have you any idea how many children it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen Three. It takes one to say What light and two more to say I didn't turn it on.”

“There's one hole in every revolution, large or small. And it's one word long— PEOPLE. No matter how big the idea they all stand under, people are small and weak and cheap and frightened. It's people that kill every revolution.”

“It's alright to feel fear, but sometimes a very bad idea to show it.”

“Ideas do matter and do have consequences.”

“The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.”

“There's a rebel lying deep in my soul. Anytime anybody tells me the trend is such and such, I go the opposite direction. I hate the idea of trends. I hate imitation; I have a reverence for individuality.”

“Did you think to kill me? There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There is only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof.”

“I have tried to be a man of letters in love with ideas in order to be a wiser and more loving person, hoping to leave the world just a little better than I found it.”

“When I wake up, my pillow’s cold and damp with tears. But tears for what? I have no idea.”

“There are some men who are consoled by the idea that there are women less attractive than their wives; and others who are haunted by the knowledge that there are more attractive.”

“Don't be afraid of silly ideas.”

“There is no significant idea which cannot be explained to an intelligent twelve year old boy in fifteen minutes.”

“New tastes are like new ideas, young man -- the older you get, the more difficult they are for you to stomach.”

“He's nuts" Bianca said
"We need to jump off this cliff" i said
"Oh nice idea!! Your nuts too”

“Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of "wrong" ideas.”

“She wondered why she’d ever thought trusting someone who wore that much eyeliner was a good idea.”

“having too many ideas is not always a good thing.”

“The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”

“An idea is like a cold germ: sooner or later someone always catches it.”

“It's a mistake, you know. You have no idea what you'll be exposed to… the obscenities and lewd comments, the lecherous gazes, the groping and pinching… and that's just my house. Imagine what it would be like here.”

“You have no idea about presents or what they mean. The last
present you gave me was a stick.”
“You wanted a weapon.”
“It was a stick.”
“It had a bow on it.”
“It was a stick.”
“I thought you liked the stick. You laughed.”

“There will be no mass-based feminist movement as long as feminist ideas are understood only by a well-educated few.”

“Ah, good conversation - there's nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.”

“Money is just an idea.”

“Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.”

“Jack Kerouac was cool because he had no idea he was.”

“He has no idea how beautiful the ordinary becomes once it disappears.”

“I’m living in separate universes, and I have no idea where I actually belong.”

“She's talking about herself in the third person because the idea of being who she is, of acknowledging that she is herself, is more than her pride can take.”

“An idea is like a rare bird which cannot be seen. What one sees is the trembling of the branch it has just left.”

“We should care for each other more than we care for ideas, or else we will end up killing each other.”

“Maxilan, darling." Locke raised one eyebrow and smiled. "I knew you were driven, but I had no idea you could smoulder. Come, take me now! Jean won't mind; he'll avert his eyes like a gentleman.”

“She stopped at the desk and held up a can for his view. "This looks like an ordinary hairspray can, right?"
"Of course." he said though he had no idea what hairspray was.”

“It is a bad idea to live too long. Few carry it off well.”

“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”

“When one steals a flying balloon and animates it to fly over Paris, one should, ideally, have some idea how said balloon normally works.”

“The big reason why folks leave a small town,' Rant used to say, 'is so they can moon over the idea of going back. And the reason they stay put is so they can moon about getting out.'

Rant meant that no one is happy, anywhere.”

“You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own.”

“sometimes we have absolutely no idea where we are, we need the smallest clue to show us where to begin.”

“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.”

“The lesson I was learning involved the idea that I could feel compassion for people without acting on it.”

“Who does ever get what they want? It doesn’t seem to happen to many of us if any at all. It’s always two people bumping against each other blindly, acting out old ideas and dreams and mistaken understandings.”

“Many religions have attempted to make statues of their gods very large, and the idea, I suppose, is to make us feel small. But if that's their purpose, they can keep their paltry icons. We need only look up if we wish to feel small.”

“The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized. This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are, until the poem, nameless and formless-about to be birthed, but already felt. That distillation of experience from which true poetry springs births thought as dream births concept, as feeling births idea, as knowledge births (precedes) understanding.”

“If those in charge of our society — politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television — can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power.”

“Ideas that require people to reorganize their picture of the world provoke hostility.”

“The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders.”

“Ideas come from everything”

“With false names, on the right nets, they could be anybody. Old men, middle-aged women, anybody, as long as they were careful about the way they wrote. All that anyone would see were the words, their ideas. Every citizen started equal, on the nets.”

“When I encounter a sunrise, a painting, a woman, or an idea that makes my heart bound like a young calf, then I know I am standing in front of happiness.”

“Jace is in love with the idea of dying,” said Isabelle.”

“The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.”

“Temptation said that we all dream of committing crimes, but that only the unbalanced make that macabre idea a reality.”

“Part of the appeal of the fantastic is taking ridiculous ideas very seriously and pretending they're not absurd.”

“Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.”

“He looked at the silver pocketknife in his hand. An idea came to him – possibly the stupidest, craziest idea he’d had since he thought, Hey, I’ll get Percy to swim in the River Styx! He’ll love me for that!”

“Except for the people who were there that one day they discovered the polio vaccine, being part of history is rarely a good idea. History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.”

“There is no idea so bad that it cannot be made to look brilliant with the proper application of fonts and color.”

“What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?'

'I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is.”

“Religion is based on the idea that God is an imbecile.”

“What were you going to do with it?” McCain asked.

"I just thought it might come in useful.”


"Were you planning to attack me?”

"No. But that’s a good idea.”

“Zee said, grumpily, “Liebling, this is not a good idea.”
“Zee,” I told him, “I am completely out of good ideas and am doing my best with the bad ones I have left.”

“If a man can possess a woman sexually -really possess- he won't need to control her ideas, her opinions, her clothes, her friends, even her other lovers.”

“It was a crazy idea. But, as usual, that’s all Percy had.”

“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you have only one idea.”

“Will smirked, clearly pleased at the effect he was having. "I've no idea. I lost consciousness about then. I was having a lovely dream about a young woman who had mislaid all her clothes…”

“He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.”

“As soon as the engagement was announced, the Pack Clans converged and shot the idea of a quiet ceremony out of the water and then kept firing at it until it stopped convulsing and died.”

“It's very hard in the beginning to understand that the whole idea is not
to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is
against the little voice inside you that wants you to quit.”

“Get over here. Sheldon's had an idea."
"Who's Sheldon?", said Isabelle.”

“There are moments in every girl’s life that are bigger than we know at the time. When you look back, you say, that was one of those life-changing,
fork-in-the-road moments and I didn’t even see it coming. I had no idea.”

“Despite serious reservations, I had to forgive Finnick for his role in the conspiracy that landed me here. He, at least has some idea of what I'm going through. And it takes too much energy to stay angry with someone who cries so much.”

“One day, she’d find a way to live her life to the fullest. She was sure of it. She just had no idea how she would manage it.”

“The thing is to understand myself: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. That is what I now recognize as the most important thing.”

“We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).”

“Thatʹs a dangerous look,ʺ said Dimitri, giving me a brief glance before returning his eyes to the road.
ʺWhat look?ʺ I asked innocently.
ʺThe one that says you just got some idea.”

“I can always tell when you're thinking about food. You forget to be the Serious Wolf and you get this dreamy look in your eyes. You know, most people would think you were thinking about a girl. They have no idea that her name is bacon.”

“Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.”

“I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.”