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Ideas Quotes

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Ideas Quotes

“Let me tell you, people go on and on about what a great idea electricity was, but I'm going to put toilet paper right next to the wheel and say those are the best ideas anyone's ever had. Scoff at it if you will, but try living for two millennia without it and then we'll talk.”

PeopleIfsTryingTwoIdeasNextGoes OnPaperLet MeWheelsElectricityToiletsGreat IdeaToilet Paper
Book:The Iron Druid Chronicles 6-Book Bundle: Hounded, Hexed, Hammered, Tricked, Trapped, Hunted
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“The ideas of people in general are not raised higher than the roofs of the houses. All their interests extend over the earth's surface in a layer of that thickness. The meeting-house steeple reaches out of their sphere.”

PeopleIdeasEarthHouseInterestHigherMeetingsRaisedSurfaceSpheresReach OutLayersRoofSteeplesThickness
Book:Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of
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“But once a culture develops sufficiently to become skeptical, the idea of censorship becomes less attractive. To suppress a book or a picture or a sculpture or a play or a film is a terrible act of aggression against the artist who created it. This is a miming of capital punishment; it destroys the life that has been emanated by a life.”

Has BeensBookIdeasPlayFilmArtistCultureTerribleSpeechPunishmentAttractiveCensorshipAggressionSkepticismSculptureSkepticalCapital Punishment
Author:Rebecca West
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“After any disturbance (such as two world wars coinciding with a period of growing economic and monetary incomprehensibility) we find our old concepts inadequate and look for new ones. But it unfortunately happens that the troubled times which produce an appetite for new ideas are the least propitious for clear thinking.”

ThinkingWorldLooksTwoIdeasWarHappensClearGrowingEconomicProducePeriodsConceptsWar Of The WorldsAppetiteNew IdeasInadequateMonetaryDisturbanceTwo WorldsClear ThinkingTroubled Times
Author:Rebecca West
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“Great problems are now being handled, keeping every thinking man in suspense; the unity or multiplicity of human races; the creation of man 1,000 years or 1,000 centuries ago; the fixity of species, or the slow and progressive transformation of one species into another; the eternity of matter; the idea of a God unnecessary: such are some of the questions that humanity discusses nowadays.”

ThinkingMenYearsHumansIdeasMatterProblemHumanityRaceCenturyCreationEternityTransformationUnitySpeciesSuspenseHuman RaceProgressiveUnnecessaryMultiplicityThinking ManCreation Of Man
Author:Louis Pasteur
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“A genuine invention in the realm of ideas must first emerge as an abstruse and even partial concept? At first blusha new idea appearstobe verycloseto insanity because to be new it must reverse important basic beliefs and assumptions which, in turn, have been institutionalized and are administered by one or another kind of priesthood with a vested interest in an old idea.”

FirstsKindHas BeensImportantIdeasTurnsBeliefInterestConceptsGenuineInventionInsanityRealmsAssumptionReverseNew IdeasPriesthoodVested InterestsOld Ideas
Author:Arthur Miller
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“The Theatre of the Absurd has renounced arguing about the absurdity of the human condition; it merely presents it in being - that is, in terms of concrete stage images. This is the difference between the approach of the philosopher and that of the poet; the difference, to take an example from another sphere, between the idea of God in the works of Thomas Aquinas or Spinoza and the intuition of God in those of St. John of the Cross or Meister Eckhart - the difference between theory and experience.”

HumansIdeasTermDifferencesConditionsStageExamplePoetTheoryApproachCrossesPhilosopherIntuitionTheatreArguingAbsurdSpheresHuman ConditionConcreteAbsurditySpinozaSt John Of The Cross
Book:The Theatre of the Absurd
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“The issue here really is not whether international trade shall be free but whether or not it makes any sense for a country - or, for that matter, a region - to destroy its own capacity to produce its own food. How can a government, entrusted with the safety and health of its people, conscientiously barter away in the name of an economic idea that people's ability to feed itself? And if people lose their ability to feed themselves, how can they be said to be free?”

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Author:Wendell Berry
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“The need for truth is not constant; no more than is the need for repose. An idea which is a distortion may have a greater intellectual thrust than the truth; it may better serve the needs of the spirit, which vary. The truth is balance, but the opposite of truth, which is unbalance, may not be a lie.”

NeedsMayIdeasSpiritLyingGreaterBalanceTruth IsIntellectualOppositesConstantVaryThrustReposeDistortion
Book:A Susan Sontag reader
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“There is no tyranny in the world more hateful than that of ideas. Ideas bring ideophobia, and the consequence is that people begin to persecute their neighbors in the name of ideas. I loathe and detest all labels, and the only label that I could now tolerate would be that of ideoclast or idea breaker.”

PeopleWorldIdeasWould BeNamesConsequenceNeighborTyrannyLabelsTolerateHatefulLoatheDetest
Book:Selected Works of Miguel de Unamuno, Volume 3: Our Lord Don Quixote
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“People thought it was asinine for me to change my swing after I won the Masters by 12 shots. ... Why would you want to change that? Well, I thought I could become better. If I play my best, I'm pretty tough to beat. I'd like to play my best more frequently, and that's the whole idea. That's why you make changes. I thought I could become more consistent.”

PeopleIfsWantWellsIdeasPlayWholeMastersBeatsShotsToughConsistentSwingsMaking Changes
Author:Tiger Woods
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“It was from America that the plain ideas that men ought to mind their business, and that the nation is responsible to Heaven for the acts of the State, - ideas long locked in the breast of solitary thinkers, and hidden among Latin folios, - burst forth like a conqueror upon the world they were destined to transform, under the title of the Rights of Man... and the principle gained ground, that a nation can never abandon its fate to an authority it cannot control.”

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Author:Lord Acton
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“The barbarians, who possessed no books, no secular knowledge, no education, except in the schools of the clergy, and who had scarcely acquired the rudiments of religious instruction, turned with childlike attachment to men whose minds were stored with the knowledge of Scripture, of Cicero, of St. Augustine; and in the scanty world of their ideas, the Church was felt to be something infinitely vaster, stronger, holier than their newly founded States.”

MenWorldMindBookIdeasStatesSchoolFeltChurchReligiousStrongerScriptureAttachmentInstructionPossessedSecularBarbariansChildlikeClergyAugustine
Book:The History of Freedom: Great Event
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“The idea that the object of constitutions is not to confirm the predominance of any interest, but to prevent it; to preserve with equal care the independence of labour and the security of property; to make the rich safe against envy, and the poor against oppression, marks the highest level attained by the statesmanship of Greece.”

IdeasCareInterestPoorLevelsRichSecurityObjectsSafeEqualHighestConstitutionMarkIndependencePropertyEnvyOppressionPreservesLabourGreeceStatesmanship
Book:The History of Freedom (and other Essays)
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“There isn't a single government agency that can't function. There's more money in this federal government, there's more money allocated than these people can possibly spend. They have to concoct asinine ways to spend it, like advertising for new food stamp users. I've gotten to the point, I'm just so righteously indignant and offended at the very idea that our government could ever run out of money when we've got a printing press, for crying out loud. Printed three and a half trillion dollars over seven years and flooded Wall Street with it.”

PeopleWayYearsIdeasGovernmentRunningThreeHalfStreetsCryWallFunctionPressesDollarsSevenAdvertisingLoudAgencyUsersMore MoneyFederal GovernmentStampsOffendedSeven YearsPrintedPrintingPrinting PressFood StampsIndignantGovernment Agencies
Author:Rush Limbaugh
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“Someone who has thought rationally and deeply about how the body works is likely to arrive at better ideas about how to be healthy than someone who has followed a hunch. Medicine presupposes a hierarchy between the confusion the layperson will be in about what is wrong with him, and the more accurate knowledge available to doctors reasoning logically. At the heart of Epicureanism is the thought that we are as bad at answering the question "What will make me happy?" as "What will make me healthy?" Our souls do not spell out their troubles.”

HeartIdeasSoulBodyTroubleHealthyDoctorsMedicineAvailableConfusionReasoningSpellsAccurateHierarchyMake Me HappyHunchesEpicureanismBody Work
Author:Alain de Botton
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“Symons remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him was the idea that they ought somehow, in the normal course of events, to have intuited long before they had finished their degrees, started families, bought houses and risen to the top of law firms - what they should properly be doing with their lives. They were tormented by a residual notion of having through some error or stupidity on their part missed out on their true calling.”

ShouldLongIdeasLawCoursesHouseCommonEventsOughtCallingDegreesNormalIllusionErrorsNotionStupidityFinishedFirmRisenResidualLaw Firms
Author:Alain de Botton
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“When you decide 'to be a writer,' you don't have the faintest idea of what the work is like. When you begin, you write spontaneously out of your limited experience of both the unwritten world and the written world. You're full of naïve exuberance. 'I am a writer!' Rather like the excitement of 'I have a lover!' But working at it nearly every day for fifty years – whether it is being the writer or being the lover – turns out to be an extremely taxing job and hardly the pleasantest of human activities.”

WorldWritingYearsHumansIdeasJobsTurnsWrittenLoversActivityExcitementFiftyHuman ActivityUnwrittenExuberance
Author:Philip Roth
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“Politics have always covered two distinct kinds of problems: problems of administrative routine, and those that may be called 'questions of the moment.' A question of the moment is, indeed, a substitute for some notion, such as the idea of God, or hereditary monarchy, or national glory, that has hitherto acted as a symbol of human co-ordination. It provides no new positive certainty to replace the discredited certainty, but is what the name implies: the raising of a question which the old certainty no longer answers.”

HumansKindMayTwoIdeasMomentsProblemNamesAnswersGloryNotionSymbolsCertaintySubstitutesCoveredRoutineMonarchyAdministrativeHereditaryOrdination
Author:Laura Riding
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