“Idealism is based on big ideas. And, as anybody who has ever been asked "What's the big idea?" knows, most big ideas are bad ones.”
All the Trouble in the World (1994)
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P. J. O'Rourke 185
American journalist 1947Related quotes
De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: To me, when we talk about the world, we are talking about our ideas of the world. Our ideas of organisation, our different religions, our different economic systems, our ideas about it are the world. We are heading for a radical revision where you could say we are heading towards the end of the world, but more in the R. E. M. sense than the Revelation sense. That is what apocalypse means – revelation. I could square that with the end of the world, a revelation, a new way of looking at things, something that completely radicalises our notions of the where we were, when we were, what we were, something like that would constitute an end to the world in the kind of abstract – yet very real sense – that I am talking about. A change in the language, a change in the thinking, a change in the music. It wouldn’t take much – one big scientific idea, or artistic idea, one good book, one good painting – who knows – we are at a critical point where the ideas are coming thicker and faster and stranger and stranger than they ever were before. They are realised at a greater speed, everything has become very fluid.
“Think big, think fast. Ideas are no one's monopoly.”
Attributed without citation at "Quotations by 60 Greatest Indians", Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology http://resourcecentre.daiict.ac.in/eresources/iresources/quotations.html,
From interview with Chitralekha
“[Alex] Big ideas don't pay the rent.”
Source: The Burning Plain (1997), p.205 (Chapter 16)
“Don't get any big ideas,
They're not gonna happen.”
Nude
Lyrics, In Rainbows (2007)
“The Web is the ultimate marketplace of ideas, governed by the laws of big numbers.”
Source: The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (2006), Ch. 5, p. 70
“Spreading the idea of freedom is a big job — it needs your help.”
1990s, Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source" (1998)
Context: Spreading the idea of freedom is a big job — it needs your help. That's why we stick to the term "free software" in the GNU Project, so we can help do that job. If you feel that freedom and community are important for their own sake — not just for the convenience they bring — please join us in using the term "free software".
Source: Death, Taxes, and Leaky Waders: A John Gierach Fly-Fishing Treasury
Marc Kaufman. Mars Up Close: Inside the Curiosity Mission https://books.google.com/books/about/Mars_Up_Close.html?id=o6XaCwAAQBAJ&hl=en. National Geographic page 15. ISBN 978-1-4262-1278-9.