New Year's Address to the Nation (1990)
Context: Our country, if that is what we want, can now permanently radiate love, understanding, the power of the spirit and of ideas. It is precisely this glow that we can offer as our specific contribution to international politics.
“As the idea of permanence of objects has faded, the idea of permanence of physical laws has become better established and more powerful.”
Source: Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987), Ch.7 New Star
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Frank Wilczek 49
physicist 1951Related quotes
“The language of poetry is the only speech which has in it the power of permanent impression”
Introduction
Bards of the Bible, 1850
“Ideas become prominent and then fade.”
Source: Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies - (Second Edition), Chapter 6, The Policy Primeval Soup, p. 117
Letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy (13 November 1789)
First published in The Private Correspondence of Benjamin Franklin (1817) p.266 https://books.google.de/books?id=jY8EAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA266&dq=constitution
The Yale Book of Quotations quotes “‘Tis impossible to be sure of any thing but Death and Taxes,” from Christopher Bullock, The Cobler of Preston (1716). The YBQ also quotes “Death and Taxes, they are certain,” from Edward Ward, The Dancing Devils (1724).
Epistles
“There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”
Often attributed to Hugo as a paraphrase of a similar idea in his Histore d'un Crime (1877): "One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas", the wording of this famous statement actually more closely resembles a passage from the relatively obscure Les Francs-Tireurs (1861) by Gustave Aimard, p. 68 https://books.google.com/books/about/Les_francs_tireurs.html?id=mKI4AQAAIAAJ:
Il y a quelque chose de plus puissant que la force brutale des baïonnettes: c'est l'idée dont le temps est venu et l'heure est sonnée.
There is something more powerful than the brute force of bayonets: it is the idea whose time has come and hour struck.
Translated into English as The Freebooters : A Story of the Texan War (1861) https://archive.org/details/freebootersstory00aima, p. 57, Ward & Lock edition
Misattributed
Variant: More powerful than the mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.
Letter to the New Orleans Times http://civilwartalk.com/threads/im-a-good-ole-rebel.34939/page-2#post-352510 (8 June 1867)
“The idea is that the object has a language unto itself.”
Anish Kapoor Opens the Door:Modern Artist Creates Monuments that Transcend Space & Time
2016, In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome! (2016)
Das Naturgesetz und die Struktur der Materie (1967), as translated in Natural Law and the Structure of Matter (1981), p. 34