Quotes about ideas and thoughts
page 66

“Barricades of ideas are worth more than barricades of stones.
There is no prow that can cut through a cloudbank of ideas. A powerful idea, waved before the world at the proper time, can stop a squadron of iron-clad ships, like the mystical flag of the Last judgement.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Our America (1891)

World, Time, Relation ships

“We sift reality through screens composed of ideas. These idea systems are limited by language. That is to say: language cuts the grooves in which our thoughts move. If we seek new validity forms,we must step outside the language.”

Frank Herbert book The Santaroga Barrier

Source: The Santaroga Barrier (1968), Chapter Ten

Reality

“You need the willingness to fail all the time. You have to generate many ideas and then you have to work very hard only to discover that they don’t work. And you keep doing that over and over until you find one that does work”

John Backus (1924–2007) American computer scientist

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/business/20backus.html

Time

“Capitalism has three innate characteristics that drive us towards destruction… firstly, that it generates and relies upon perpetual growth... (Second:)…the idea that our right to own natural wealth equates to the amount of money that we’ve got in the bank or we can borrow. So, you can take as much natural wealth away from other people as you like.... The third characteristic is the one that really ensures that people go along with capitalism, the idea that everyone can pursue — and can expect to find — private luxury.”

George Monbiot (1963) English writer and political activist

Quoted by Lee Camp, Pandemic is Not Just a Crisis, It’s Also a Gift, Consortium News https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/23/lee-camp-pandemic-is-not-just-a-crisis-its-also-a-gift/, (23 April 2020)

Money, Wealth, People, Nature

“The evils of a military system, which, after all, every day must attenuate, are light compared with the evils of an anarchic conservatism reinstated in central Europe. Divided Germany means preponderating Russia. What can be more desirable in the interests of the highest civilisation than the interposition in the heart of the European state-system, of a powerful, industrious, intelligent, and progressive people, between the western nations and the half-barbarous Russian swarms? To the careful observer of the history of modern Europe it is plain that increasing vigour and self-conscious strength in Germany are other words for the spread eastwards of the best of those ideas, the most durable of those civilising elements, in which the difference of historic development has enabled England and France to anticipate her.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Fortnightly Review (September 1870), p. 371
1870s

History, Light, Intelligence, People

“It so often happened to me that someone who shared my opinion kept the larger share for himself that I am now forewarned and offer people only ideas.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

People

“Prayers will be offered up for the success of our work in temples and in churches also; for it will bring relief from an old burden, which all have suffered.
But we must first bring enlightenment to men's minds. The idea must make its way into the most distant, miserable holes where our people dwell. They will awaken from gloomy brooding, for into their lives will come a new significance. Every man need think only of himself, and the movement will assume vast proportions.
And what glory awaits those who fight unselfishly for the cause!
Therefore I believe that a wondrous generation of Jews will spring into existence. The Maccabeans will rise again.
Let me repeat once more my opening words: The Jews who wish for a State will have it.
We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and die peacefully in our own homes.
The world will be freed by our liberty, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness.
And whatever we attempt there to accomplish for our own welfare, will react powerfully and beneficially for the good of humanity.”

Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) Austro-Hungarian journalist and writer

VI : Conclusion
Der Judenstaat [The Jewish State] (1896)

Home, Success, Wealth, Spring

“I think it would a good idea now if all the ugly ones came and sat down near the front! You have! Good!”

Ken Dodd (1927–2018) English comedian, singer-songwriter and actor

Thinking

“That idea that car manufacturers might disinvest after we leave the EU? It's a - what's the word?”

Daniel Hannan (1971) British politician

oh yes. Lie. Tweet by verified account https://twitter.com/DanielJHannan/status/644428141302255616 (17 September 2015) 2010s

Cars

“The idea was to take a movie which was about death...and use the iconography of life to tell the story.”

Mick Jackson (director) (1943) film director

The Director of the Scariest Movie We've Ever Seen Still Fears Nuclear War the Most

Life, Death

“Studies have shown that 90% of error in thinking is due to error in perception. If you can change your perception, you can change your emotion and this can lead to new ideas.”

Edward de Bono (1933) Maltese physician

Teaching Thinking (1991)

Study, Thinking, Error, Change

“If we continue to use industrial resources for other purposes – defence, housing, etc. thus preventing the diversion of resources to export work, the [exchange] rate will continue to fall. ... the basic idea of internal stability of prices and employment, which had dominated economic policy for so long will not be maintainable. It will not be possible to maintain stable internal prices and wages; it will not be possible to avoid unemployment. There will be a continuous process of change and readjustment and much of this will be painful.”

Rab Butler (1902–1982) British politician

Chancellor of the Exchequer
Source: Memorandum, 'External Action' (21 February 1952) advocating Operation ROBOT, quoted in Correlli Barnett, The Verdict of Peace. Britain Between Her Yesterday and the Future (London: Pan, 2002), p. 162

Pain, Housing, Change

“The establishment of commercial union throughout the Empire would not only be the first step, but the main step, the decisive step towards the realization of the most inspiring idea that has ever entered into the minds of British statesmen.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Speech to the Chambers of Commerce of the Empire (9 June 1896), quoted in The Times (10 June 1896), p. 4
1890s

Decision

“The spirit of the Right is dominated by scepticism towards the possibility of profound change in society and above all towards the idea that man can achieve progress over himself. On the Left, on the other hand, there exists a belief in human and social progress.”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

L'Unité d'un Homme (November 1994), quoted in The Times (21 November 1994), p. 11
President of the European Commission

Change

“Force is not a fact at all, but an idea embodying what is approximately the fact.”

William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher

Preface footnote, p. ix. Mr. R. Tucker searched Clifford's note books for Karl Pearson and sent him the above quote, in Clifford's handwriting.
The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (1885)

“Now, where did we ever get the idea that there is such a thing as 'good government?'”

Robert LeFevre (1911–1986) American libertarian businessman

That is a contradiction in terms as ridiculous as 'constructive rape.'

p. 14
Good Government: Hope or Illusion? (1978)

“I’m a magician who writes about ideas. I’m not a science-fiction writer. People who call me that are wrong. Most of what I write is fantasy or magic realism or plays about my Mexican-American background.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Bradbury Talk Likely to Feature the Unexpected (1994)

Science, People

“…I like the idea that stories are active, that if you stepped on them they would become alive, like plants, and that the same memory can grow new shoots and flowers, and can change over the course of people’s lives…”

Jackie Kay (1961) Poet and novelist

On the living nature of stories in “The SRB Interview: Jackie Kay” https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/2016/03/the-srb-interview-jackie-kay/ in the Scottish Review of Books (2016 Mar 21)

People, Flowers, Memory, Change

“I have been looking for spontaneous generation for twenty years without discovering it. No, I do not judge it impossible. But what allows you to make it the origin of life? You place matter before life and you decide that matter has existed for all eternity. How do you know that the incessant progress of science will not compel scientists to consider that life has existed during eternity, and not matter? You pass from matter to life because your intelligence of today cannot conceive things otherwise. How do you know that in ten thousand years, one will not consider it more likely that matter has emerged from life? You move from matter to life because your current intelligence, so limited compared to what will be the future intelligence of the naturalist, tells you that things cannot be understood otherwise. If you want to be among the scientific minds, what only counts is that you will have to get rid of a priori reasoning and ideas, and you will have to do necessary deductions not giving more confidence than we should to deductions from wild speculation.”

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) French chemist and microbiologist

Original: (fr) La génération spontanée, je la cherche sans la découvrir depuis vingt ans. Non, je ne la juge pas impossible. Mais quoi donc vous autorise à vouloir qu'elle ait été l'origine de la vie? Vous placez la matière avant la vie et vous faites la matière existante de toute éternité. Qui vous dit que, le progrès incessant de la science n'obligera pas les savants, qui vivront dans un siècle, dans mille ans, dans dix mille ans... à affirmer que la vie a été de toute éternité et non la matière.? Vous passez de la matière à la vie parce que votre intelligence actuelle, si bornée par rapport à ce que sera l'intelligence des naturalistes futurs, vous dit qu'elle ne peut comprendre autrement les choses. Qui m'assure que dans dix mille ans on ne considérera pas que c'est de la vie qu'on croira impossible de ne pas passer à la matière? Si vous voulez être au nombre des esprits scientifiques, s, qui seuls comptent, il faut vous débarrasser des idées et des raisonnements a priori et vous en tenir aux déductions nécessaires des faits établis et ne pas accorder plus de confiance qu'il ne faut aux déductions de pures hypothèses."

As quoted in Pasteur et la philosophie (2004), by Patrice Pinet, p. 63

Partially quoted in Louis Pasteur : Free Lance of Science (1950) by René Dubos, p 396

Confidence, Future, Intelligence, Self-confidence

“…When I was a kid, I didn’t know what I was going to do. Even when I started playing music, I had no idea that I would get to this point in my professional life…”

Pete Escovedo (1935) Mexican-American jazz musician and percussionist

On whether Escovedo knew he had staying power as a musician in “Pete Escovedo: Rhythms of Life” https://jazztimes.com/features/interviews/pete-escovedo-rhythms/ in Jazz Times (2017 Nov 23)

Music, Life

“The hyper-visibility means that you both can't hide, but also never really feel completely seen by authority figures and by your peer groups. Trapped in that space of hyper-visibility, I think, is where we wrestle with the ideas of, 'What part of me matters?'”

Tressie McMillan Cottom American writer, sociologist, and professor

On the concept of being hyper-visible in “In 'Thick,' Tressie McMillan Cottom Looks At Beauty, Power And Black Womanhood In America” https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/01/21/in-thick-tressie-mcmillan-cottom-looks-at-beauty-power-and-black-womanhood-in-america in WBUR (2019 Jan 21)

Thinking, Feeling, Parting

“I try to give folks the tools and resources to be a part of a movement…I'm a very strong believer in the idea that everybody has a place in the movement.”

Blair Imani (1993) American activist

On political activism in in “Millennial activist Blair Imani is fighting for equality, and wants all generations to join her” https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-16/millennial-activist-blair-imani-fighting-equality-and-wants-all-generations-join in PRI (2016 Dec 16)

Strong, Parting

“But we can do so much now, with so little, that we can take care of everybody. That’s why the idea of scarcity is all wrong.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

Source: From 1980s onwards, Buckminster Fuller Talks Politics (1982)

“I think most Americans, without recognizing it, say and believe both racist and antiracist ideas. What I'm seeking to do is get them to recognize those racist ideas, get them to essentially get rid of them and essentially strive to be antiracist, strive to see the racial groups as equals.”

Ibram X. Kendi (1982) American author and historian

On his views of the American mentality regarding race in “Ibram X. Kendi's Latest Book: 'How To Be An Antiracist'” https://www.npr.org/2019/08/13/750709263/ibram-x-kendis-latest-book-how-to-be-an-antiracist in NPR (2019 Aug 13)

Thinking

“The religion of thousands consists in clinging to an idea; they are happy in their sloth.... many would observe silence from fear of fanatics.”

Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak (1551–1602) vizier

Ain-i-Akbari. Quoted in Lal, K. S. (2001). Historical essays. New Delhi: Radha.(II.203)

Religion, Silence, Happiness, Fear

“…here’s the thing about all the titles. It’s so great to not have to think about that. The title is a gesture to categorize it, reduce it, and frame it. In the sonnets I can carry an idea and know that I have to turn that idea…”

Terrance Hayes (1971) American poet

On avoiding titling an unfinished work in “Interview with Terrance Hayes” http://katonahpoetry.com/interviews/interview-terrance-hayes/ in the Katonah Poetry Series (2017 Sep 21)

Thinking

“When we're born, our experience is half the time spent undoing these ideas that were placed onto our body since birth and then building a personal identity on top of that.”

Morgan Parker (writer) American poet

On the Black experience in “'Magical Negro' Carries The Weight Of History” https://www.npr.org/2019/02/11/693587521/magical-negro-carries-the-weight-of-history in NPR (2019 Feb 11)

Birth, Time, Personality

“That idea only makes sense if you don’t think too hard about it.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Chapter 18 (p. 308) Vorkosigan Saga, The Warrior's Apprentice (1986)

Sense, Thinking, Making love

“I don’t have much time for the idea that art is some languorous thing on the sidelines, and that you have to wait 50 years before you address a subject…”

Kamila Shamsie (1973) Pakistani writer

Source: On writing about a topic even if it is recent in “Kamila Shamsie: ‘Being a UK citizen makes me feel more able to take part in the conversation’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/27/kamila-shamsie-home-fire-man-booker-longlisted-author-interview in The Guardian (2017 Aug 27)

Time, Waiting, Art

“The heart of a Mahatma is like the tamarind seed perfectly pure. These Mahatmas are ever young. For a Jnyani, there is no age-idea.”

Bhagawan Nityananda (1897–1961) Hindu guru and saint

251
The Chidakasha Gita (1927)

Heart, Age

“It is not Bhakti to give a man some money or to give him a meal as charity. Bhakti is universal love. Seeing God, in all beings, without the least idea of duality, is Bhakti.”

Bhagawan Nityananda (1897–1961) Hindu guru and saint

44
The Chidakasha Gita (1927)

Money, God, Universe, Love

“Yet it is groupthink around here. Everybody is so paranoid and saying: Oh, we can’t object to this lobby. Because this lobby is so powerful, we can’t object to them. Look, it isn’t about the ideas; it is about the freedom of speech.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

4 February 2019 https://mondoweiss.net/2019/02/combating-presidential-paranoia/ about jewish lobby in ‘Combating BDS Act’ in the Senate 2019

Freedom

“Freedom itself demands discomfort. It demands dissatisfaction. Because the freer a society becomes, the more each person will be forced to reckon and compromise with views and lifestyles and ideas that conflict with your own.”

Mark Manson book Everything Is Fucked

Personality, Freedom

“I know that it is the Socialist idea that making profits is a vice, and that making large profits is something of which a man ought to be ashamed. I hold the other view. I consider that the real vice is making losses.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

House of Commons, 1 June 1937. Hansard, Vol 324, Col 883 https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1937/jun/01/finance-bill. The 1930s

Loss, Making love

“Human extinction is still a sparse, loose idea advocated by sometimes opposing groups. Most obviously, there is the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT), the Church of Euthanasia and efilism. VHEMT is somewhat divided between those who wish the human race to cease population in order to eradicate human overpopulation and its exhaustion and destruction of the earth, and those who also choose not to breed but see an apocalyptic horizon and operate under an 'every man for himself' attitude of imminent hedonism 'for tomorrow we die."”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Ahumanism subscribes to no singular human extinction group, but clearly the message of the former sector of the group is more in keeping with the affirmative benefits of human death.
Embracing Death, p. 143
The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene (2020)

“Not only does having a child really increase your carbon footprint, but we are living on an earth where there are a lot of organisms — human, non-human — that are in desperate need of care. And so, for me, if people want to care for children, for animals, whatever, there are cries for care everywhere. I’m asking us to reflect on this idea that we need to reproduce.”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Why this professor's climate-crisis solution is rankling Twitter: 'The worst thing you can do is have a child' https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/why-professor-climate-crisis-solution-rankling-twitter-155305526.html (13 February 2020) Yahoo!Life

Animals, Children, People

“People confuse creativity and innovation. But it is very simple. Creativity is about conceiving new ideas. Innovation is about implementing them.”

Paul Sloane (1950) British author and puzzle designer

Quoted in "Paul Sloane Talks about Strategies for Creating Effective Innovation Processes" https://innovationmanagement.se/imtool-articles/paul-sloane-talks-about-strategies-for-creating-effective-innovation-processes/, InnovationManagement.se (2 May 2019)

People

“[T]he artist sells the work of his brush and in this he is a merchant. The writer sells to any who will buy, let his ideas be what they will. The teacher sells his knowledge of books—often in too low a market—to those who would have this knowledge passed on to the young.
The doctor... too is a merchant. His stock-in-trade is his intimate knowledge of the physical man and his skill to prevent or remove disabilities. ...The lawyer sometimes knows the laws of the land and sometimes does not, but he sells his legal language, often accompanied by common sense, to the multitude who have not yet learned that a contentious nature may squander quite as successfully as the spendthrift. The statesman sells his knowledge of men and affairs, and the spoken or written exposition of his principles of Government; and he receives in return the satisfaction of doing what he can for his nation, and occasionally wins as well a niche in its temple of fame.
The man possessing many lands, he especially would be a merchant... and sell, but his is a merchandise which too often nowadays waits in vain for the buyer. The preacher, the lecturer, the actor, the estate agent, the farmer, the employé, all, all are merchants, all have something to dispose of at a profit to themselves, and the dignity of the business is decided by the manner in which they conduct the sale.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), Concerning Commerce

Waiting, Law, Business, Learning

“We learn about worlds when they do not accommodate us. Not being accommodated can be pedagogy. We generate ideas through the struggles we have to be in the world; we come to question worlds when we are in question. When a question becomes a place you reside in, everything can be thrown into question: explanations you might have handy that allow you to make sense or navigate your way through unfamiliar as well as familiar landscapes no longer work.”

Sara Ahmed (1969) Australian and British academic

Source: "An Affinity of Hammers" (2016), p. 22

Question, Learning, World, Way

“No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.”

movie Dead Poets Society

John Keating character

Business, World, Change

“Time and Matter are both ideas. Matter makes a more immediate impression on Man, but Time’s effects are longer lasting.”

Michael Moorcock book The Time Dweller

Source: The Time Dweller (p. 22), Short fiction, The Time Dweller (1969)

Making love, Time

“Initially, new ideas are rejected. Later they become dogma, if you’re right. And if you’re really lucky you can publish your rejections as part of your Nobel presentation.”

Rosalyn Sussman Yalow (1921–2011) American medical physicist

From a speech given by Rosalyn Yalow to a group of school children approximately five years after being awarded the Nobel Prize, as quoted by the New York Times, June 2, 2011 https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/us/02yalow.html.

Parting

“A man must be either conscientiously scientific in his approach or frankly speculative. What he must not do is present his speculative untested ideas in a manner and style of dogmatic certainty that they are not entitled to claim. This is being pseudo-scientific.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

Source: Man and Time (1964), Ch. 11, p. 271

“It is, of course, men who are more likely to inhibit themselves for the sake of appearing to be sensible and dependable.[…] If pressed, I will agree that more women than men wish to appear wonderfully sensitive and intuitive, and may stop being realistic […] in order to deceive themselves and other people. On the other hand, women in general tend to be more realistic and yet in certain matters more open-minded than men, more ready to resist that pressure of opinion. They are less likely to be put into blinkers by ideas.
Moreover […] as a rule the average woman notices far more than the average man; she has a better eye for detail than he has; she makes a more alert witness.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

Source: Man and Time (1964), Ch. 8, p. 182

Dependency, People, Appearance, Making love

“I have pointed out already how ideas seep down to wider and commoner levels of intelligence and feeling until at last they are believed to be solid realities.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

Source: Man and Time (1964), Ch. 7, p. 159

Intelligence, Reality, Feeling

“We tend quite rightly to associate an age with its newest and most original ideas, and there is no harm in this as long as we remember that only a few men, at that time, may have actually held those ideas, and that many decades, often amounting to centuries, may pass before those ideas have seeped down to wider and commoner levels of belief, thought, and feeling.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

Source: Man and Time (1964), Ch. 6, p. 140

Time, Age, Feeling, Men

“The aims and ideals of the Soviet revolution inspired the patriotic enthusiasm of millions of people in the 1930s, during World War II, and in the postwar reconstruction period. This explains the Soviet Union's great leap forward, the achievement of a high level of industrial capacity in a very short time, the transformation of the Soviet Union into a major power in terms of science and culture. The historic victory in the Great Patriotic War against Nazism, which was a surprise not only for Hitler but also for the Western democracies is also explained by what we have said above. All this is true. But the historical truth is also that the regime and the system abused the faith of the people in these high ideals, turning them to its own advantage. Rule by the people, equality, justice, and the promise of a happy future — all these ideas were utilized for the sake of maintaining and strengthening totalitarianism.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1990s, On My Country and the World (1999)

Democracy, Faith, Justice, Time

“...if the Catholick religion is destroyd by the Infidels, it is a most contemptible and absurd Idea, that, this, or any Protestant Church, can survive that Event. ... in Ireland particularly, the R[oman] C[atholic] Religion should be upheld in high respect and veneration. ... I am more serious on the positive encouragement to be given to this religion...because the serious and earnest belief and practice of it by its professors forms, as things stand, the most effectual Barrier, if not the sole Barrier, against Jacobinism.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to William Smith, Member of the Irish Parliament (29 January 1795), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VIII: September 1794–April 1796 (1969), p. 131
1790s

Religion

Quotes about ideas and thoughts page 66

Quotes about ideas and thoughts
page 66