Ideas famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one.
-- Albert Einstein -
The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size
-- Albert Einstein -
The State, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.
-- Albert J. Nock -
The superficial distinctions of Fascism, Bolshevism, Hitlerism, are the concern of journalists and publicists; the serious student sees in them only one root-idea of a complete conversion of social power into State power.
-- Albert J. Nock -
The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation-th at is to say, in crime. It originated for the purpose of maintaining the division of society into an owning and exploiting class and a property-less dependent class - that is, for a criminal purpose.
-- Albert J. Nock -
Perhaps one reason for the falling-off of belief in a continuance of conscious existence is to be found in the quality of life that most of us lead. There is not much in it with which, in any kind of reason, one can associate the idea of immortality.
-- Albert J. Nock -
You have no idea, right now, what some young person in your church will mean for the cause of Christ. Lean in, encourage, mentor, think big.
-- Albert Mohler -
We Masons are among the fortunate ones who are taught to meet together with others opposing convictions or competitive ideas and yet respect each other as Brothers.
-- Albert Pike -
Anyone who has accustomed himself to regard the life of any living creature as worthless is in danger of arriving also at the idea of worthless human lives.
-- Albert Schweitzer -
An idea is, in the end, always stronger than circumstances.
-- Albert Schweitzer -
It used to be that readers were relegated because they considered themselves far above society, and so the metaphor of the ivory tower developed. Now there's still this idea that the reader doesn't take part in the social game and in politics, the res publica, but for other reasons: he doesn't do it because he's not making any money.
-- Alberto Manguel -
Ideas, like men, can become dictators. We Americans have so far escaped regimentation by our rulers, but have we escaped regimentation by our own ideas? I doubt if there exists today a more complete regimentation of the human mind than that accomplished by our self-imposed doctrine of ruthless utilitarianism.
-- Aldo Leopold -
I know very dimly when I start what's going to happen. I just have a very general idea, and then the thing develops as I write.
-- Aldous Huxley -
The Christian idea of a perfect heaven that is something other than a non-existence is a contradiction in terms.
-- Aldous Huxley -
In the world of ideas everything was clear; in life all was obscure, embroiled.
-- Aldous Huxley -
Perhaps my information hurt the Soviet Union more than it helped. I have no idea. It was not something I ever discussed with the KGB officers that I was dealing with.
-- Aldrich Ames -
I came into the Agency with a set of ideas and attitudes that were quite typical of people coming into the Agency at that time. You could call it liberal anti-communism.
-- Aldrich Ames -
I wanted to be president of the United States. I really did. The older I get, the less preposterous the idea seems.
-- Alec Baldwin -
To be excited and at the same time satisfied; to desire and possess -that has been described somewhere as the wise man's idea of heaven.
-- Alec Waugh -
If one had to worry about one's actions in respect of other people's ideas, one might as well be buried alive in an antheap or married to an ambitious violinist. Whether that man is the prime minister, modifying his opinions to catch votes, or a bourgeois in terror lest some harmless act should be misunderstood and outrage some petty convention, that man is an inferior man and I do not want to have anything to do with him any more than I want to eat canned salmon.
-- Aleister Crowley -
Music does not express any idea, but it gives rise to thousands.
-- Alessandro Manzoni -
Ideas are abundant. Practice giving your ideas away. If you hold onto ideas too tightly, you can convince people (and yourself) that you may not come up with any new ones
-- Alex Bogusky -
The more alone I am, the more focused I can get. I've written things with people, some of which I liked and others I think are total travesties. Collaborating is trying to make a piece of music and get someone else to come up with the ideas. What's the fun of that?
-- Alex Chilton -
If real, regular, normal, boring life, (when you're at home every day, seeing the same people, doing the same things) is like sitting at home on the floor surrounded by toys... traveling feels to me like going to Toys R Us with your toy box and getting to trade stuff in and buy new things and explore whole new ideas.
-- Alex Day -
It is easier to tone down a wild idea than to think up a new one.
-- Alex Faickney Osborn -
Any of us will put out more and better ideas if our efforts are appreciated.
-- Alex Faickney Osborn -
They say it was Cesc Fabregas who threw the pizza at me but, to this day, I have no idea who the culprit was.
-- Alex Ferguson -
If I have my health I can carry on. There will be a point when I do quit but I have absolutely no idea when that is.
-- Alex Ferguson -
You are right. I have no idea, and it is none of my business, and I was taught to obey my parents. But sometimes it is just impossible to obey blindly. Sometimes a child must strike out on her own. A child cannot be a child forever, whether that means not touching a spindle or . . . or . . .
-- Alex Flinn -
One of the things you learn very early in writing for television, especially, is that compressing the story is always a good idea.
-- Alex Gansa -
I've written original material before, where I've come up with the idea and the characters myself, and that's definitely very different to working with someone else's characters and stories.
-- Alex Garland -
Maybe 'Can't Stop Feeling' and 'Turn It On' we'll just release as singles. It's a thing The Beatles used to do which I really loved, the idea of releasing something as a single completely on its own.
-- Alex Kapranos -
Just because you can leap off a drum kit doing a scissors kick while hitting a chord, people expect you to be an extrovert socially. But I'm not always comfortable with the idea of small talk at a party.
-- Alex Kapranos -
Cinema, which is influenced by every single part of life, is direct and reaches you immediately. And writing - the best writing is complex ideas communicated concisely. And music - if it's a good tune, make sure people can bloody hear it.
-- Alex Kapranos -
Just to prove that even the silliest idea can be pursued to its illogical conclusion, Legal Realism spawned Critical Legal Studies.
-- Alex Kozinski -
I really don't have any idea about photography, but I take pictures.
-- Alex Majoli -
Near the end of the 1700s, philosophers began to declare that humans were rational individuals. People were flattered by being recognized as individuals, and by being called rational, and the idea soon wormed its way into the belief systems of nearly everyone in the upper class. Despite resistance from Church and State, the idea of rational individuality replaced the assumption that truth comes only from god and king.
-- Alex Pentland -
It is not simply the brightest who have the best ideas; it is those who are best at harvesting ideas from others. It is not only the most determined who drive change; it is those who most fully engage with like-minded people. And it is not wealth or prestige that best motivates people; it is respect and help from peers.
-- Alex Pentland -
At its very heart, Worldchanging is about using the best of people's new ideas, bringing them together and applying them to the massive problems that we all face.
-- Alex Steffen -
America has the highest standard of living of any major country in the entire world. To maintain and enhance that standard of living, America should continue to embrace those qualities which have made America great: openness and dynamism. Openness to new technologies, new ideas and new people is America's greatest source of strength.
-- Alex Tabarrok -
Democracy is an experimental system. I like it when states try out new ideas. I think we ought to expand, not contract, our federalist system.
-- Alex Tabarrok -
A lot of peopletell me I'm a bit dreamy, but I like the idea of that. Of being somewhere else.
-- Alex Turner -
I get very driven by certain themes and ideas.
-- Alex Winter -
Thank you, Jane Birkin, for providing me with infinite outfit ideas and the confidence to dress like a boy but act like a girl.
-- Alexa Chung -
"The most powerful single idea in mathematics is the notion of a variable."
-- Alexander Dewdney -
Well people often ask me how I felt growing up with a father who was a politician and who was often away. But when I'm asked that question I often reflect on my inability really to be able to answer it in any relative sense because I never grew up with a father doing anything else. So I just have no idea what it would be like otherwise.
-- Alexander Downer -
It is the lone worker who makes the first advance in a subject: the details may be worked out by a team, but the prime idea is due to the enterprise, thought, and perception of an individual.
-- Alexander Fleming -
You cannot force ideas. Successful ideas are the result of slow growth. Ideas do not reach perfection in a day, no matter how much study is put upon them.
-- Alexander Graham Bell -
The inventor is a man who looks around upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea. The spirit of invention possesses him, seeking materialization.
-- Alexander Graham Bell -
Away with the idea of getting independence first, and looking for liberty afterwards... Our liberties, once lost, may be lost forever.
-- Alexander H. Stephens -
While the constitution continues to be read, and its principles known, the states, must, by every rational man, be considered as essential component parts of the union; and therefore the idea of sacrificing the former to the latter is totally inadmissible.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
There is nothing absurd or impracticable in the idea of a league or alliance between independent nations for certain defined purposes precisely stated in a treaty regulating all the details of time, place, circumstance, and quantity; leaving nothing to future discretion; and depending for its execution on the good faith of the parties.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
I believe in nothing here, except a handful of people, a few ideas, and the fact that one cannot arrest movement.
-- Alexander Herzen -
Never was Catholicism, never were the ideas of chivalry, impressed on men so deeply, so multifariously, as the bourgeois ideas.
-- Alexander Herzen -
Here is a definition which correctly reflects the course of thought and action of a grandmaster: - The plan in a game of chess is the sum total of successive strategical operations which are each carried out according to separate ideas arising from the demands of the position.
-- Alexander Kotov -
British fashion is self confident and fearless. It refuses to bow to commerce, thus generating a constant flow of new ideas whilst drawing in British heritage.
-- Alexander McQueen -
I think the idea of mixing luxury and mass-market fashion is very modern, very now - no one wears head-to-toe designer anymore.
-- Alexander McQueen -
I think a badly crafted, great idea for a new film with a ton of spelling mistakes is just 100 times better than a well-crafted stale script.
-- Alexander Payne -
At present we can only reason of the divine justice from what we know of justice in man. When we are in other scenes, we may have truer and nobler ideas of it; but while we are in this life, we can only speak from the volume that is laid open before us.
-- Alexander Pope -
Two fixed ideas can no more exist together in the moral world than two bodies can occupy one and the same place in the physical world.
-- Alexander Pushkin -
Knowing where you have come from is important in forming an idea of where you want to go.
-- Alexander Stille -
Think for thyself one good idea, but known to be thine own, is better than a thousand gleaned from fields by others sown.
-- Alexander Wilson -
Even though Xavier was only human, it seemed he could protect me from anything and everything. I wouldn't have been worried if a fire-breathing dragon had torn of the roof, because I knew that Xavier was there. I wondered fleetingly if I was expecting to much og him, but dismissed the idea.
-- Alexandra Adornetto -
We have no idea, but its not like we're going to win any awards for normalcy anytime soon. So you get into people's heads? The two of us can throw people around like toys. Zu once blew up an AC unit, and all she did was walk by it.
-- Alexandra Bracken -
I was in love with the idea of him. An ideal of him. Of who I thought he was. Of who he used to be.
-- Alexandra Potter -
I don't understand it myself, really. It's like the idea of him is better than the him of him
-- Alexandra Potter -
Are there not some places where we seem to breathe sadness? — why, we cannot tell. It is a chain of recollections — an idea which carries you back to other times, to other places — which, very likely, have no connection with the present time and place.
-- Alexandre Dumas -
The man who works recognizes his own product in the world that has actually been transformed by his work. He recognizes himself in it, he sees his own human reality in it he discovers and reveals to others the objective reality of his humanity of the originally abstract and purely subjective idea he has of himself
-- Alexandre Kojeve -
Politics is traditionally a male domain in Russia. Until now, women have only been accessories. Now, female protest groups are emerging - not because men came up with the idea, but through their own efforts. That's something new for Russia.
-- Alexei Navalny -
I suppose the common idea of me is that I'm going to be someone who's hyper and cracking jokes all the time, but people who meet me are soon disabused of that notion.
-- Alexei Sayle -
I think that my ideas of the world are that it's random and cruel but kind of quite comical really, and therefore the humour, in a sense, springs from that.
-- Alexei Sayle -
I was still too weak to understand his chess ideas at that time but I remember being covered in smoke.
-- Alexei Shirov -
When the novice photographer starts taking pictures, he carries his camera about and shoots everything that interests him. There comes a time when he must crystallize his ideas and set off in an particular direction. He must learn that shooting for the sake of shooting is dull and unprofitable.
-- Alexey Brodovitch -
I often think of a quote from entrepreneur Jim Rohn: 'You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.' Surround yourself with people who are doing interesting things, who are thinking interesting thoughts, who challenge you to be better, and who come from a diverse set of backgrounds and experiences. That, combined with appropriate moments of 'me' time, provides the perfect breeding ground for great ideas. And whatever you do, don't get hung up on what competitors are doing. Be aware of what's going on in the industry, but don't let it dictate your own creative process.
-- Alexis Ohanian -
The great thing about the Internet is, it's the freest marketplace of ideas that there is.
-- Alexis Ohanian -
Entrepreneur is just French for 'has ideas, does them'.
-- Alexis Ohanian -
In a word, learning is decontextualized. We break ideas down into tiny pieces that bear no relation to the whole. We give students a brick of information, followed by another brick, followed by another brick, until they are graduated, at which point we assume they have a house. What they have is a pile of bricks, and they don't have it for long.
-- Alfie Kohn -
I am grateful for the idea that has used me.
-- Alfred Adler -
The finest piece of mechanism in all the universe is the brain of man. The wise person develops his brain, and opens his mind to the genius and spirit of the world's great ideas. He will feel inspired with the purest and noblest thoughts that have ever animated the spirit of humanity.
-- Alfred Armand Montapert -
Could we look into the head of a Chess player, we should see there a whole world of feelings, images, ideas, emotion and passion
-- Alfred Binet -
Alas, everything that men say to one another is alike; the ideas they exchange are almost always the same, in their conversation. But inside all those isolated machines, what hidden recesses, what secret compartments! It is an entire world that each one carries within him, an unknown world that is born and dies in silence! What solitudes all these human bodies are!
-- Alfred de Musset -
Few persons enjoy real liberty; we are all slaves to ideas or habits.
-- Alfred de Musset -
I can't help it, the idea of the infinite torments me.
-- Alfred de Musset -
The true God, the mighty God, is the God of ideas.
-- Alfred de Vigny -
What is a great life if not a youthful idea executed by a man of mature years.
-- Alfred de Vigny -
If it's a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.
-- Alfred Hitchcock -
To keep up even a worthwhile tradition means vitiating the idea behind it which must necessarily be in a constant state of evolution: it is mad to try to express new feelings in a mummified form.
-- Alfred Jarry -
The indictment knocked me on the head. First of all, I hand no idea at all about 90 per cent of the accusations in it. The crimes are horrible beyond belief, if they are true. Secondly, I don't see how they can fail to recognize a soldier's obligation to obey orders. That's the code I've live by all my life.
-- Alfred Jodl -
The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax.
-- Alfred Kazin -
Modern American literature was born in protest, born in rebellion, born out of the sense of loss and indirection which was imposed upon the new generations out of the realization that the old formal culture-the "New England idea"-could no longer serve.
-- Alfred Kazin -
I liked reading and working out my ideas in the midst of that endless crowd walking in and out of the (library) looking for something. I, too, was seeking fame and fortune by sitting at the end of a long golden table next to the sets of American authors on the open shelves.
-- Alfred Kazin -
I intend to leave after my death a large fund for the promotion of the peace idea, but I am skeptical as to its results.
-- Alfred Nobel -
If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.
-- Alfred Nobel -
Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
Above all things we must be aware of what I will call 'inert ideas' - that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
The importance of an individual thinker owes something to chance. For it depends upon the fate of his ideas in the minds of his successors.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
Education with inert ideas is not only useless; it is above all things harmful.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
With the sense of sight, the idea communicates the emotion, whereas, with sound, the emotion communicates the idea, which is more direct and therefore more powerful.
-- Alfred North Whitehead