“I was a young man with unformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything, and to my astonishment, the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them.”

— Charles Darwin

Attributed to Darwin in another version of the Lady Hope fabrication.
Misattributed

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Charles Darwin 161

British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by… 1809–1882

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The idea had spread like wildfire.... like a moral plague, as one critic of the time had put it.

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“I will add that I have recently received from Hungary a little paper on non-Euclidean geometry in which I rediscover all my own ideas and results worked out with great elegance… The writer is a very young Austrian officer, the son of one of my early friends, with whom I often discussed the subject in 1798, although my ideas were at that time far removed from the development and maturity which they have received through the original reflections of this young man. I consider the young geometer J. Bolyai a genius of the first rank.”

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

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“Woman's degradation is in mans idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man.”

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“I can't explain this. I don't know what would make a young man at 21 get so sick and twisted to kill nine people in a church; this is beyond my understanding… There are real people out there who are organized to kill people in religion and based on race. But it's 2015 there are people out there looking for Christians to kill them. So this is a mean time we live in.”

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2010s

“It is like a forced idea and I wonder why they are pushing for it now?”

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As quoted in A Logical Journey: From Gödel to Philosophy (1996) by Hao Wang

“I want to always be an interloper. I never want to feel like I'm a guy who is embraced by the people who are putting me on the air. I want to feel like I broke into the studio and took over and made them mad. If I'm not doing that, I'm not doing my job.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Larry King Live interview (2010)

“I was a young man with unformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything, and to my astonishment, the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them.”

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