Quotes about ideas and thoughts
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“That's pretty hot," he said.
"Punching me in the eye?"
"Well, no. Of course not. I meant the idea of getting rough with you is hot. I'm a big fan of full-contact sports."
"I'm sure you are.”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

Sport

“So what if man's body evolved from the monkeys? Whether he came from monkeys or fish is unimportant. The important idea is that when the body became "human" enough, the first human soul slipped into it.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Soul, Fish

“You did what you did out of love. I can't be mad at you over that. It was stupid, but that's how love is. Do you have any idea what I'd do for you? To keep you safe?”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Love, Stupidity, Madness

“I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Catherine Earnshaw (Ch. IX).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)

Life, Dreams, Water, Wine

“Teach her that the idea of 'gender roles' is absolute nonsense. Do not ever tell her that she should or should not do something because she is a girl.
'Because you are a girl' is never reason for anything.
Ever.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977) Nigerian writer

Source: Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

Girl

“The idea hovered and shimmered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking about something else.”

Philip Pullman book Northern Lights

Source: The Golden Compass

Way, Thinking

“Do whatever you do intensely. The artist is the man who leaves the crowd and goes pioneering. With him there is an idea which is his life.”

Robert Henri (1865–1929) American painter

Source: The Art Spirit: Notes, Articles, Fragments of Letters and Talks to Students, Bearing on the Concept and Technique of Picture Making, the Study of Art

Life

“My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them──by which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Time

“Why don't you ever wait a second and see what I'm planning, or thinking, before you burst in with your opinions and ideas? You never even give me a chance.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Someone Like You

Thinking, Chance, Waiting

“I think the problem with people like this is that they are so stupid that they have no idea how stupid they are.”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

People, Stupidity, Problem, Thinking

“Is God a man or a woman?
God could be an armadillo. I have no idea.”

Sherman Alexie book Reservation Blues

Source: Reservation Blues

God

“And why not?” “You know why! This is a bad idea.” “Perhaps I like a challenge.” “Perhaps you’re a glutton for punishment!” “Perhaps I am in love.”

Karen Chance American writer

Source: Fury's Kiss

Love

“Life and love are life and love, a bunch of violets is a bunch of violets, and to drag in the idea of a point is to ruin everything. Live and let live, love and let love, flower and fade, and follow the natural curve, which flows on, pointless.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Love, Life, Flowers, Nature

“Why is it a good idea for you and not a good idea for me?”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

“In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Hell

“He will not succeed in this," Taran said. "Somehow, we must find a way to escape. We dare not lose hope."
"I agree absolutely," Fflewddur answered. "Your general idea is excellent; it's only the details that are lacking…”

Lloyd Alexander book The Black Cauldron

Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book V : The High King (1968), Chapter 20
Source: The Black Cauldron
Context: Orgoch gave a most ungentle snort. Orddu, meanwhile, had unfolded a length of brightly woven tapestry and held it out to Taran.
“We came to bring you this, my duckling,” she said. “Take it and pay no heed to Orgoch’s grumbling. She’ll have to swallow her disappointment—for lack of anything better.”
“I have seen this on your loom,” Taran said, more than a little distrustful. “Why do you offer it to me? I do not ask for it, nor can I pay for it.”
“It is yours by right, my robin,” answered Orddu. “It does come from our loom, if you insist on strictest detail, but it was really you who wove it.”
Puzzled, Taran looked more closely at the fabric and saw it crowded with images of men and women, of warriors and battles, of birds and animals. “These,” he murmured in wonder, “these are of my own life.”
“Of course,” Orddu replied. “The pattern is of your choosing and always was.”
“My choosing?” Taran questioned. “Not yours? Yet I believed...” He stopped and raised his eyes to Orddu. “Yes,” he said slowly, “once I did believe the world went at your bidding. I see now it is not so. The strands of life are not woven by three hags or even by three beautiful damsels. The pattern indeed was mine. But here,” he added, frowning as he scanned the final portion of the fabric where the weaving broke off and the threads fell unraveled, “here it is unfinished.”
“Naturally,” said Orddu. “You must still choose the pattern, and so must each of you poor, perplexed fledglings, as long as thread remains to be woven.”

Hope, Way

“It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.”

Edward de Bono (1933) Maltese physician

“You have no idea how strong my love is!”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Love, Strong

“They're afraid of change, and we must change. They're afraid of the young, and we are the young. They're afraid of music, and music is our life. They're afraid of books, and knowledge, and ideas. They're most afraid of our magic.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Witch & Wizard

Life, Books, Music, Knowledge

“The full cosmos consists of the physical stuffconsciousness. Take away consciousness and it's only dust; add consciousness and you get things, ideas, and time.”

Neal Stephenson book Anathem

Source: Anathem

Time

“Whose cruel idea was it for the word “lisp” to have an “s” in it?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Dogs

“Books can ignite fires in your mind, because they carry ideas for kindling, and art for matches.”

Gary D. Schmidt (1957) American writer

Source: Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy

Books, Art

“My idea of an interesting person is someone who is quite proud of their seemingly abnormal life and turns their disadvantage into a career.”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

Source: Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste

Life, Personality

“That time we separated was my idea. I thought, well, I'm fifty years old and there might be someone else out there. People waste their happiness - that's what makes me sad. Everyone's so scared to be happy.”

Wally Lamb book She's Come Undone

Source: She's Come Undone

Happiness, People, Sadness, Time

“First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Imagination, Reality

“The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Variant: The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting.

Waiting

“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

“Until you actually start making something, your brilliant idea is just that, an idea.”

Jason Fried software entrepreneur

Source: Rework

“… it was never a good idea to date a foreigner. You can never tell when they're lying.'
'hello. Dave was BRITISH.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Every Boy's Got One

Lying

“There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Strong

“Um i'm happy to sit close to you and everything, but i had no idea you would like it so much,' Paris muttered.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Night

Happiness

“What must that be like? To be admired before you’ve even said a word, to be desired two or three hundred times a day by people who have absolutely no idea what you’re like?”

David Nicholls book Starter for Ten

Source: Starter for Ten

People, Time

“The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttress; you need a religion if you are terrified of death.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Death, Religion

“I know who I am. Bloody hell, I'm getting enough bills for Karl Pilkington so I hope I am him, 'cos if I'm not, I have no idea who I'm paying for.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Source: An Idiot Abroad: The Travel Diaries of Karl Pilkington

Hope, Hell

“Well,” Naomi said cheerfully, “what’s the worst that can happen?” They were silent, considering that, because there were just so many possibilities. But in the end, it was a better idea than Facebook.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Last Breath

“Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

People

“History in general is therefore the development of Spirit in Time, as Nature is the development of the Idea is Space.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

History, Nature, Time

“It's called peaceful coexistence, Santangelo. You should try it and if it works we may sell the idea to the Israelis and Palestinians”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

Peace

“If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Attributed to Einstein in Treasury of the Christian Faith https://books.google.com/books?id=Ll4wAAAAYAAJ&q=%22shabby+clothes%22+%22shoddy+furniture%22&dq=%22shabby+clothes%22+%22shoddy+furniture%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiS04TynqDLAhUO8GMKHUYICMkQ6AEINTAA (1949), and subsequently repeated in other books. No original source where Einstein supposedly said this has been located, and it is absent from authoritative sources such as Calaprice, The Ultimate Quotable Einstein. <br class="br">Disputed

Clothes

“All the opportunities you let slip by! The idea, the inspiration just doesn´t come fast enough. Instead of being open, you´re closed up tight. That´s the worst sin of all - the sin of omission.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Mandarins

Source: The Mandarins

“A word grows to a thought – a thought to an idea – an idea to an act. The change is slow, and the Present is a sluggish traveler loafing in the path Tomorrow wants to take.”

Beryl Markham book West with the Night

Source: West with the Night

Travel, Change

“You actually cannot sell the idea of freedom, democracy, diversity, as if it were a brand attribute and not reality -- not at the same time as you're bombing people, you can't.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

People, Democracy, Reality, Freedom

“I'm this superphilosophical kind of person. Stuck in a prison of abstract ideas and overpowering emotions, I have this personality that makes it really hard to survive.”

Natsuo Kirino book Real World

Source: Real World

Personality

“An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe it.”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

People

“No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.”

Emma Goldman book Anarchism and Other Essays

Source: Anarchism and Other Essays

Law, Time

“That's the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.”

Ray Bradbury book Zen in the Art of Writing

Source: Zen in the Art of Writing

Secret, Cats

“.

In the end, we both want the right thing to happen, the right person to win, the right idea to prevail. We have no faith that it will, but still we want it. Neither of us has given up on anything.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Faith, Personality

“Zara: It's just a registry…
Kit: Am I the only one who's read X-Men and realizes why this is a bad idea?”

Cassandra Clare book Lord of Shadows

Source: Lord of Shadows

Men, Reading

“Using supernatural beings to build the perfect weapon? Intriguing idea."

"Not really," I said. "They did it on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A sub-par season. I slept through half the episodes.”

Kelley Armstrong book Stolen

Source: Stolen

Perfection, Season

“The idea that two is the ideal, and that one is only good as half of two. You are not a half, and you should never treat someone else like a half.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Hold Me Closer: The Tiny Cooper Story

“When in doubt, poke the beehive with a stick to see if anything interesting flies out.
I clapped my hands. 'I had no idea Pit teams had such pretty cheerleaders. Can you do it again, but with more spirit this time?”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Strikes

Time

“Most dancers I know, especially the talented and successful ones, seem to possess [my dog's] knack for living moment to moment. You see, their idea of time is related to those infinitely short moments when they are onstage being their superselves.”

Paul Taylor (1923–2015) american philosopher, born 1923

Source: Private Domain: An Autobiography

Dogs, Time, Success

“We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can almost be as stupid as a cabbage as long as you doubt.”

Dallas Willard (1935–2013) American philosopher

Source: Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God

Stupidity, Personality

“A deserted library in the morning - there's something about it that really gets to me. All possible words and ideas are there, resting peacefully.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

“Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through before we even got the first idea that there is more to life than eating, or fighting, or power in the Flock? A thousand lives, Jon, ten thousand!”

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Source: Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Life, Fight

“Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars [translated from Trauerspiel, 1928].”

Walter Benjamin book The Origin of German Tragic Drama

Source: The Origin of German Tragic Drama

Star

“If you can imagine a man having a vasectomy without anesthetic to the sound of frantic sitar-playing, you will have some idea of what popular Turkish music is like.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Music, Imagination

“Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Source: Quoted in: Kabir, Hajara Muhammad,. Northern women development. [Nigeria]. p, 351. ISBN 978-978-906-469-4. OCLC 890820657.

Happiness, Personality, Happy

“It's not that I don't know that it's a bad idea. It's that, lately, bad ideas have a particular hold over me.”

Holly Black book Red Glove

Source: Red Glove

“Drinking wine and wearing trousers were nothing compared to reading the history of ideas.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 13: Leiden

History, Drink, Wine, Reading

“I want to keep sleeping, but the sun outside my window has other ideas: First blind her. Then jab her eyeballs with scorching-hot daggers.”

Natasha Friend (1972) American writer

Source: Lush

Sleep, Sun

“You do have the idea of being ‘just good friends?’”
He gave her a sideways look. “For so high and honorable an estate,” Roshaun said, “ ‘just’ seems a poor modifier to choose.”

Diane Duane Wizards at War

Source: Wizards at War

“Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.”

Toni Morrison book The Bluest Eye

Source: The Bluest Eye

Love, Beauty, History, Envy

“The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief. And by dangerous I don't mean thought-provoking. I mean: might get people killed.”

Sarah Vowell The Wordy Shipmates

Source: The Wordy Shipmates

People

“The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“I feel the terror of idleness,
like a red thirst.
Death isn't just an idea.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Death, Feeling

“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.”

Maya Angelou book Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Source: Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1993) p. 12.

People, Travel, Understanding, Cry

“I have no idea what you just said, child,' Breeze said. 'So I'm simply going to pretend it was coherent, then move on.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

“If your mind is truly, profoundly stuck, then it might be much better off than when it was loaded with ideas”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“I hate witches. Humans had the right idea, burning them at the stake.”

Charlaine Harris book Dead to the World

Source: Dead to the World

Hate

“I like the idea of being whoever I want to be.”

Dita Von Teese (1972) American burlesque dancer, model and actress

Variant: I've always loved the idea of not being what people expect me to be.

“My idea of good company, Mr. Eliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

People

“It's a good idea to have your own books with you in a strange place”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

Books

“You fixed yourself. You didn’t need me.”

“No, Sydney.” My voice was ragged. “I do need you. You have no idea how much I need you.”

Richelle Mead book The Fiery Heart

Source: The Fiery Heart

“I have no idea why it apparently takes three grown men to cook some hamburgers.
One to cook, one to kibbitz, and one to insult the other two.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Men, Cooking

“This is a great idea,” said Trey. “You kids should totaly go see that play. Make a whole day of it. Grab some dinner and hang out at the library or whatever it is you do for fun.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

“The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance - the idea that anything is possible.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

“Any idea is a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize something means to think it.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Elements of the Philosophy of Right

Jede Vorstellung ist eine Verallgemeinerung, und diese gehört dem Denken an. Etwas allgemein machen, heißt, es denken.
"Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts oder Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse", Berlin, 1833, p. 35
"Every representation is a generalization, and this is inherent in thought. To generalize something means to think it."
"Any idea is a universalization, and universalizing is a property of thinking. To universalize something means to think."
"An idea is always a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize means to think."
Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820/1821)

Thinking

“Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea, they become powerless when they oppose it.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Men, Strong

“It's the idea that everyone has one and just one soulmate in the world, and that if you find them, you recognize them immediately.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 2

World

“We could do it, you know," Gale says quietly.

"What?" I ask.

"Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we could make it," says Gale.

I don't know how to respond. This idea is so preposterous.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

As quoted in Michel Foucault (1991) by Didier Eribon, as translated by Betsy Wind, Harvard University Press, p. 282
Context: There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas (and because it constantly produces them) that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.

Books, Birth