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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". . . the mind is desperate to fix the river {of events} in place: Possessed by ideas of the past, preoccupied with images of the future, it overlooks the plain truth of the moment."
"People are losing the capacity to listen to words or follow ideas."
"I never touch sugar, cheese, bread... I only like what I'm allowed to like. I'm beyond temptation. There is no weakness. When I see tons of food in the studio, for us and for everybody, for me it's as if this stuff was made out of plastic. The idea doesn't even enter my mind that a human being could put that into their mouth. I'm like the animals in the forest. They don't touch what they cannot eat."
"The whole reason one wants to do lower budget films is because the lower the budget, the bigger the ideas, the bigger the themes, the more interesting the art."
"There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves. People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior."
"... scientific research is compounded of ... empirical procedures, general speculative ideas, and mathematical or abstract reasoning."
"I don't think there are many people up in research who have strong ideas about things that they haven't really had experience with."
"The Arab and the camel are inseparable. It's been said that and Arab would give up his wife rather than give up his camel. Personally, I haven't got a camel, but I think it's a great idea."
"The Republicans are the party of bad ideas. The Democrats are the party of no ideas."
"There are photographers who push for war because they make stories. They search for a Chinese who has a more Chinese are than the others and they end up finding one. They have him take a typically Chinese pose and surround him with chinoiseries. What have they captured on their film? A Chinese? Definitely not: the idea of the Chinese."
"Some things cannot be explained. This is part of the magic of life. There cannot be a word or an idea or a definition attached to everything."
"Here's what is exciting about sharing ideas with others: If you share a new idea with ten people, they get to hear it once and you get to hear it ten times."
"... All ideas need to be heard, because each idea contains one aspect of the truth. By examining that aspect, we add to our own idea of the truth. Even ideas that have no truth in them whatsoever are useful because by disproving them, we add support to our own ideas."
"When one's ideas are not challenged, one's ability to defend them weakens."
"Only the ideas that we really live have any value."
"If it works, it's obsolete."
"Body', 'soul', and 'spirit' may designate phenomenal domains which can be detached as themes for definite investigations; within certain limits their ontological indefiniteness may not be important. When, however, we come to the question of man's Being, this is not something we can simply compute by adding together those kinds of Being which body, soul, and spirit respectively possess--kinds of being whose nature has not as yet been determined. And even if we should attempt such an ontological procedure, some idea of the Being of the whole must be presupposed."
"The walls, the bars, the guns and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people."
"Don't express your ideas too clearly. Most people think little of what they understand, and venerate what they do not."
"Many of our ideas of democracy, so much of our literature and philosophy and science can be traced back to roots right here in Athens."
