Quotes
Quotes about Ideas
Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.
The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.
Minds are like parachutes-- they only function when open. Thomas Dewar "Doublethink" means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. â¢George Orwell The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend. â¢Henri L. Bergson Hold up to him his better self, his real self that can dare and do and win out . . . People radiate what is in their minds and in their hearts. â¢Eleanor H. Porter The bigger a man's head gets, the easier it is to fill his shoes. â¢Henry Courtney A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us. â¢Ralph Waldo Emerson Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind. â¢Leonardo Da Vinci A cynic is a man who looks at the world with a monocle in his mind's eye. â¢Carolyn Wells Craftiness is a quality in the mind and a vice in the character. â¢S. Dubay A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. â¢Winston Churchill The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water. â¢Sigmund Freud A feeble body weakens the mind. â¢Jean Jacques Rousseau Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable. â¢Buckminster Fuller A man's mind will very gradually refuse to make itself up until it is driven and compelled by emergency. â¢Anthony Trollope We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe. â¢Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably. â¢Jean de LaBruyere Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive. â¢Napoleon Hill A nation that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan. â¢Martin Luther King, Jr. A vacant mind invites dangerous inmates, as a deserted mansion tempts wandering outcasts to enter and take up their abode in its desolate apartments. â¢Nicholas Hilliard A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind. â¢Eugene Ionesco Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible. This power becomes available to you just as you can change your beliefs. â¢Maxwell Maltz Some minds are like concrete, all mixed up and permanently set. â¢Source Unknown The mind is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not discreetly how to use it. â¢Michel de Montaigne If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't. â¢Lyall Watson Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace. â¢Elbert Hubbard The mind has exactly the same power as the hands: not merely to grasp the world, but to change it. â¢Colin Wilson Mind unemployed is mind unenjoyed.
One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education... The second way of enslaving a people is to suppress the sources of information, not only by burning books but by controlling all the other ways in which ideas are transmitted.
Be and not seem. A man is related to all nature. The less government we have the better. Every man has his own vocation, talent is the call. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. To be great is to be misunderstood. Every man is in some way my superior. A man is a god in ruins. Life is a festival only to the wise. Knowledge is the only elegance. We boil at different degrees. Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it. We learn geology the morning after the earthquake. What is the hardest thing in the world? To think. Accept your genius and say what you think. Make yourself necessary to somebody. The only way to have a friend is to be one. Insist on yourself; never imitate. Music causes us to think eloquently. To live without duties is obscene. It is not length of life, but depth of life. The greatest homage to truth is to use it. The only reward of virtue is virtue. Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path. We become what we think about all day long. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. There is no knowledge that is not power. Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies. Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. Who so would be a man must be a nonconformist. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it. A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before. Heroism feels and never reasons and is therefore always right. A good indignation brings out all one's powers. A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature. Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect. Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. Beauty rests on necessities. The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy. People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. My chief want in life is someone who shall make me do what I can. Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind. We walk alone in the world. Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables. This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it. The only sin we never forgive each other is difference of opinion. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before. Judge of your natural character by what you do in dreams. What your heart thinks is great, is great. The soul's emphasis is always right. The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. The only sin we never forgive each other is difference of opinion. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. He is great who is what he is from nature, and who never reminds us of others. A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist. Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were real. Perhaps they are. The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Our faith comes in moments, yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences. We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is merely through a transfer of idolatry. What lies beyond us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. When I was praised I lost my time, for instantly I turned around to look at the work I had thought slightly of, and that day I made nothing new. To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. We cannot see things that stare us in the face until the hour comes that the mind is ripened. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age. Why should we be cowed by the name of Action?. The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature. To think is to act. We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it. Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of somebody's enthusiasm. It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances. If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him. He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds. There is no beautifier of complexion or form of behavior like the wish to scatter joy, and not pain, around us. This gives force to the strong - that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action. -U.S. Poet.
Whoever is admitted or sought for, in company, upon any other account than that of his merit and manners, is never respected there, but only made use of. We will have such-a-one, for he sings prettily; we will invite such-a-one to a ball, for he dances well; we will have such-a-one at supper, for he is always joking and laughing; we will ask another because he plays deep at all games, or because he can drink a great deal. These are all vilifying distinctions, mortifying preferences, and exclude all ideas of esteem and regard. Whoever is had (as it is called) in company for the sake of any one thing singly, is singly that thing, and will never be considered in any other light; consequently never respected, let his merits be what they will.
There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who hate them.
A cul-de-sac to which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.
For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.
I cannot believe that this country cannot come together around some values what these kids need is a moral life... the issue is not ideas, it is conduct. The real question is how we reach these young people morally, and what do we bring to them.
I cannot believe that this country cannot come together around some values what these kids need is a moral life... the issue is not ideas, it is conduct. The real question is how we reach these young people morally, and what do we bring to them.
I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.
Fear of error which everything recalls to me at every moment of the flight of my ideas, this mania for control, makes men prefer reason's imagination to the imagination of the senses. And yet it is always the imagination alone which is at work.
In these times we fight for ideas, and newspapers are our fortresses.
Night time is really the best time to work. All the ideas are there to be yours because everyone else is asleep.
Ideas are, in truth, forces. Infinite, too, is the power of personality. A union of the two always makes history.
When you write down your ideas you automatically focus your full attention on them. Few if any of us can write one thought and think another at the same time. Thus a pencil and paper make excellent concentration tools.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.
Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.
Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.
Various kinds of ideas can be classified by their relationship to the authentication process. There are ideas systematically prepared for authentication ("theories"), ideas not derived from any systematic process ("visions"), ideas which could not survive any reasonable authentication process ("illusions"), ideas which exempt themselves from any authentication process ("myths"), ideas which have already passed authentication processes ("facts"), as well as ideas known to have failed- or certain to fail- such processes ("falsehoods" - both mistakes and lies).
The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.
If the small minority of enlightened citizens who are able to conceive sound principles of political management do not succeed in winning the support of their fellow citizens and converting them to the endorsement of policies that bring and preserve prosperity, the cause of mankind and civilization is hopeless. There is no other means to safeguard a propitious development of human affairs than to make the masses of inferior people adopt the ideas of the elite. This has to be achieved by convincing them. It cannot be accomplished by a despotic regime that instead of enlightening the masses beats them into submission. In the long run the ideas of the majority, however detrimental they may be, will carry on. The future of mankind depends on the ability of the elite to influence public opinion in the right direction.
I wonder how many of the people who profess to believe in the leveling ideas of collectivism and egalitarianism really just believe that they themselves are good for nothing. I mean, how many leftists are animated by a quite reasonable self-loathing? In their hearts they know that they are not going to become scholars or inventors or industrialists or even ordinary good kind people. So they need a way to achieve that smugness for which the left is so justifiably famous. They need a way to achieve self-esteem without merit. Well, there is politics. In an egalitarian world everything will be controlled by politics, and politics requires no merit.
