Ideas quotes

Ideas

16.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

16.4K quotes

Explore further

Browse quotes that often appear alongside ideas — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.

Quote collection

Ideas quotes (page 179 of 821)

Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.

Haile Gerima Filmmaker
Ideas

"A lot of young black people in America, and even in Africa and Brazil, would say that they are telling their story, but most of the films are like application forms with the formulaic ideas of Hollywood."

Read quote 3 likes
Ideas

"Modern life... changes no longer century by century, but year by year, ten times faster than it ever has before-populations doubling, civilizations unified more closely with other civilizations, economic interdependence, racial questions, and-we're dawdling along. My idea is that we've got to go very much faster."

Read quote 3 likes
Ideas

"There was even a recurrent idea in America about an education that would leave out history and the past, that should be a sort of equipment for aerial adventure, weighed down by none of the stowaways of inheritance or tradition."

Read quote 3 likes
Ideas

"Long afterward Amory thought of sophomore spring as the happiest time of his life. His ideas were in tune with life as he found it; he wanted no more than to drift and dream and enjoy a dozen new-found friendships through the April afternoons."

Read quote 3 likes
Ideas

"He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an overwound clock."

Read quote 3 likes
Ideas

"I had these glorified ideas about San Francisco and its drug culture - I thought inspiration would just hit me and I would get these San Francisco drugs in my system and all of a sudden an amazing record would come out. But that's not really what happened at all."

Read quote 3 likes
Zadie Smith Novelist, Essayist
Ideas

"It's got two aspects. The bit that involves the public life I could not really tolerate and cannot really tolerate. I just can't get used to the idea of being somebody unreal in people's minds. I can't live my life like that."

Read quote 3 likes
Zadie Smith Novelist, Essayist
Ideas

"I'm very attracted to exile literature - particularly Nabokov - exactly because the idea of being away from home for any serious length of time is so inconceivable to me."

Read quote 3 likes
Zadie Smith Novelist, Essayist
Ideas

"I lost many literary battles the day I read 'Their Eyes Were Watching God.' I had to concede that occasionally aphorisms have their power. I had to give up the idea that Keats had a monopoly on the lyrical."

Read quote 3 likes
Ideas

"I think it's very rare, as an actor, that you get to a script, or an idea of a script, and you go, "Oh, I just have to do that!" It fell into place very quickly."

Read quote 3 likes
Oliver Parker Film Director
Ideas

"There are certain scenes in the edit you're playing with it and certain scenes don't put back together the way you imagined. Sometimes they're better and sometimes they don't have that thing, so it's never foolproof. But you certainly get an idea that here we've got enough and we've got to move on because you're always against time and money there. Whatever the budget is, you have to get practical about it."

Read quote 3 likes
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Justice, Jurist, Author
Ideas

"The thing I want to do is put as many new ideas into the law as I can, to show how particular solutions involve general theory, and to do it with style. I should like to be admitted to be the greatest jurist in the world."

Read quote 3 likes
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Justice, Jurist, Author
Ideas

"The ideas of the classics, so far as living, are our commonplaces. It is the modern books that give us the latest and most profound conceptions. It seems to me rather a lazy makeshift to mumble over the familiar."

Read quote 3 likes
Olivia Newton-John Singer, Actress
Ideas

"The idea is to encourage men to go with their wives and screen. So, if the wife is going to go and do her screening, then the man can go and do his baseline screening, too. Men need to be aware of the health of their bodies, as well - prostate cancer and breast cancer are almost on the same level."

Read quote 3 likes
Olivia Wilde Actress, Producer, Director
Ideas

"I've thought for a long time that my body type would have worked well in the '70s. The idea that you could be a broad-shouldered, small-breasted woman and still wear really great outfits."

Read quote 3 likes