“If I had as clear an idea of ghosts, as I have of a triangle or a circle, I should not in the least hesitate to affirm that they had been created by God; but as the idea I possess of them is just like the ideas, which my imagination forms”

— Baruch Spinoza

Letter to Hugo Boxel (Oct. 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58 (54).
Context: If I had as clear an idea of ghosts, as I have of a triangle or a circle, I should not in the least hesitate to affirm that they had been created by God; but as the idea I possess of them is just like the ideas, which my imagination forms of harpies, gryphons, hydras, &c., I cannot consider them as anything but dreams, which differ from God as totally as that which is not differs from that which is.<!--pp. 382-383

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Baruch Spinoza 210

Dutch philosopher 1632–1677

Eva Hesse (1936–1970) German-born American sculptor

[Johnson, Ellen Halda, American Artists on Art: From 1940 to 1980, August 1, 1982, Westview Press, ISBN 0064301125, p. 192]

“All my life I have had a certain idea of France.”

Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) eighteenth President of the French Republic

Toute ma vie, je me suis fait une certaine idée de la France.
Opening sentence of his Mémoires de guerre.
Most famous

“I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

This has sometimes been misquoted as: If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the decency to betray my country.
What I Believe (1938)
Source: What I Believe and Other Essays

“I had no idea I had such a memorable cervix.”

Gina Barberi

Radio From Hell (December 14, 2005)

“One day I had the idea of radiation implosion. As in all ideas that have ever popped up in my head, there is no way I can trace the source.”

John Clive Ward (1924–2000) British-Australian nuclear physicist

J. C. Ward, Memoirs of a Theoretical Physicist (Optics Journal, Rochester, 2004).

“I was just talking with friends and they said it was good idea and I just sort of liked the idea.”

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge (1982) a member of the British royal family

AP via CBS News https://web.archive.org/web/20150906180820/https://www.cbsnews.com/news/prince-faces-press/
Associated Press interview during his gap year (29 September 2000)

“My drawings have been described as pre-intentionalist, meaning that they were finished before the ideas for them had occurred to me. I shall not argue the point.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

Interview, Life Magazine (New York, March 14, 1960).
Letters and interviews

“The idea was fantastically, wildly improbable. But like most fantastically, wildly improbable ideas it was at least as worthy of consideration as a more mundane one to which the facts had been strenuously bent to fit.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“I too was filled with a sort of shyness and fear, as I was called to leave 'the world of will and idea' in which I had lived and created, and in whose reality I had believed. But the happy liberating touch of non-objectivity drew me out into the 'desert' where only feeling is real.... and so feeling became the content of my life. It was no 'empty square' I had exhibited but the feeling of non-objectivity. I perceived that the 'thing' and the 'idea' were taken to be equivalents of feeling, and understood the lie of the world of will and idea. Is the milk bottle the symbol of milk? Suprematism is the rediscovery of that pure art which in the course of time, and by an accretion of 'things', had been lost to sight.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

As quoted in Artists on Art; from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 453
1921 - 1930

“I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and — ta-da!— the World Wide Web.”

Tim Berners-Lee (1955) British computer scientist, inventor of the World Wide Web

Answers for Young People http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/Kids.html

“If I had as clear an idea of ghosts, as I have of a triangle or a circle, I should not in the least hesitate to affirm that they had been created by God; but as the idea I possess of them is just like the ideas, which my imagination forms”

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Baruch Spinoza 210

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