"Every idea appears at first as a strange visitor, and when it begins to be realized, it is hardly distinguishable from fantasy."
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Ideas quotes
Ideas
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Ideas quotes (page 198 of 821)
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"There is no good government but what is republican. That the only valuable part of the British constitution is so; for the true idea of a republic is "an empire of laws, and not of men." That, as a republic is the best of governments, so that particular arrangement of the powers of society, or in other words, that form of government which is best contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the law, is the best of republics."
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"I imagine that as contemporary music goes on changing in the way that I'm changing it what will be done is to more and more completely liberate sounds from abstract ideas about them and more and more exactly to let them be physically uniquely themselves. This means for me: knowing more and more not what I think a sound is but what it actually is in all of its acoustical details and then letting this sound exist, itself, changing in a changing sonorous environment."
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"There has also been a change - a slippage - in our intellectual and moral strength. Seven lean years of drouth and famine have withered a field of ideas."
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"Whether they be young in spirit, or young in age, the members of the Democratic Party must never lose that youthful zest for new ideas and for a better world, which has made us great."
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"The idea is that for ten minutes, we forget that we have feelings. And we forget about protecting ourselves or other people and we just say the truth. For ten minutes. And then we can go back to being lame."
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"I was not religious, but I liked rituals. I liked the idea of connecting an action with remembering."
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"The ideas of directing attention outward, trying to imagine other people complexly, trying not to see myself as the center of the universe - these concepts have become important to me, and I hope they're at work in my life on a minute-by-minute basis."
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"But it was sure a privilege to love him, huh?" I nodded into his shirt. "Gives you an idea how I feel about you," he said. My old man. He always knew just what to say."
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"Augustus: “You probably need some rest.” Me: “I’m okay.” Augustus: “Okay.” (Pause.) “What are you thinking about?” Me: “You.” Augustus: “What about me?” Me: “‘I do not know which to prefer, / The beauty of inflections / Or the beauty of innuendos, / The blackbird whistling / Or just after.’” Augustus: “God, you are sexy.” Me: “We could go to your room.” Augustus: “I’ve heard worse ideas."
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"Because it's kind of great, being an idea that everybody likes. But I could never be the idea to myself, not all the way."
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"I do my precalc homework, and then when I'm done I actually sit with the textbook for like three hours and try to understand what I just did. That's the kind of weekend it is--the kind where you have so much time you go past the answers and start looking into the ideas."
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"But to be perfectly frank, this childish idea that the author of a novel has some special insight into the characters in the novel ... it's ridiculous. That novel was composed of scratches on a page, dear. The characters inhabiting it have no life outside of those scratches. What happened to them? They all ceased to exist the moment the novel ended."
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"He liked the idea of coffee quite a lot—a warm drink that gave you energy and had been for centuries associated with sophisticates and intellectuals. But coffee itself tasted to him like caffeinated stomach bile."
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"Okay, maybe I'm not such a shitty writer. But I can't pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can't fathom into constellations."
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"We were just looking at ideas of each other."
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"I was trying to say something about Christianity, the idea that you have to be tortured to attain heaven. I didn't believe that."
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"The thing is, in America, it just seemed ridiculous - I mean, the idea of having a hit record over there, ... It was just something you could never do."
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"The idea of being a rock and roll musician sort of suited my talents and mentality. The freedom was great, but then I found out I wasn't free. I'd got boxed in...The whole Beatle thing is just beyond comprehension ... subconsciously I was crying for help."
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"The idea of beetles came into my head. I decided to spell it BEATles to make it look like beat music, just a joke."
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