Ideas quotes
16.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside ideas — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"I wanted to keep the music very electronic, very filmic, and give it an almost sci-fi like quality. Music is a necessity for me. I go into the studio at least five days a week, every week, so once I had the idea and the template, the process was quick and fun."
"People are often led to causes and often become committed to great ideas through persons who personify those ideas. They have to find the embodiment of the idea in flesh and blood in order to commit themselves to it."
"For years, I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions in the South, a little change here, a little change there. Now I feel quite differently. I think you've got to have a reconstruction of the entire system, a revolution of values."
"I could never adjust to the separate waiting rooms, separate eating places, separate rest rooms, partly because the separate was always unequal, and partly because the very idea of separation did something to my sense of dignity and self-respect."
"So every day So every day I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God, one of which was you."
"I feel the terror of idleness, like a red thirst. Death isn't just an idea."
"There's something about seeing a movie that you like, and being able to see the scenes that didn't make it, just as a window into the process of how choices are made and how a movie is made. To me, the idea of getting to have the scenes on the DVD is very exciting."
"Television is interesting, in that the pace is quicker and you can see your work more quickly than with movies. And then, with the added social media aspect, you can access that relationship to the fans directly and you have control of the content of what you say, your perspective, your opinions and your ideas."
"But the idea is to provoke and persuade, not to soothe. And the best way to make an argument is to make it, straightforwardly, honestly, passionately, without regard to whether people will like you afterward."
"Vulnerability, like he had the power to hurt her or pleasure her in a way no other man could. For the first time, he was uncomfortable with the idea of having complete power over her"
"Putting down on paper what you have to say is an important part of writing, but the words and ideas have to be shaped and cleaned, cleaned as severely as a dog cleans a bone, cleaned until there's not a shred of anything superfluous."
"I thought I'm going to die. So why can't I do everything? And what is this idea that I worked all day yesterday, so I'm tired today? I've never believed that.I thought, "Just suppose I could choreograph a ballet." And I did it. Suppose I could teach dance at the theater in Cleveland. And I did it. Suppose I could sing for a living - that I could stop these two jobs as a waitress and a salesperson."
"I think all poems are commissioned. They just come to me without somebody outside commissioning them. The idea comes and I will live with them 'til I get it as close to what I mean. I've never been totally satisfied. I've come close a few times."
"The idea that people do very bad things for sometimes very good reasons, feels reasons."
"And then they would have the shoe removers on one side, and the non-shoe removers on the other side until they could work through coming to understand why we might both be trying to worship authentically, and because of our cultural background we have these different ideas. But it took a while."
"I believe in classic ideas. They are timeless. They are forever. There are many fads in management."
"Own one idea. Complete it. Map the current model of purchase and usage. Change how it is done so at least some part of the market uses only your product. Extend from that core user to a much broader universe. Describe your concept in a very short, "six-word story" - a la Ernest Hemingway: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn.""
"There's really no way to duplicate how someone gets from the beginning to the end of an idea."
"Every story starts with an idea, but it is the characters that move this idea forward."
"Have you any idea how to wake a hibernating Elder?” Machiavelli shook his head. “Mars, what about you? Any advice?” “Yes. Don’t."
