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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"Knowledge and ideas tend to be a bit like experience - nice, but not necessarily useful. Clear thinking, logical priorities and the ability to reason will beat bright ideas and unassisted experience everytime."
"The person who can laugh with life has developed deep roots with confidence and faith-faith in oneself, in people and in the world, as contrasted to negative ideas with distrust and discouragement."
"We live in the Age of the Higher Brain, the cerebral cortex that has grown enormously over the last few millennia, overshadowing the ancient, instinctive lower brain. The cortex is often called the new brain, yet the old brain held sway in humans for millions of years, as it does today in most living things. The old brain can't conjure up ideas or read. But it does possess the power to feel and, above all, to be. It was the old brain that caused our forebears to sense the closeness of a mysterious presence everywhere in Nature."
"I think there's an awful lot of twaddle and bullshit on EVA. The whole game is to turn retained earnings into more earnings. EVA has ideas about cost of capital that make no sense. Of course, if a company generates high returns on capital and can maintain this over time, it will do well. But the mental system as a whole does not work."
"It's very useful to have a good grasp of all the big ideas in hard and soft science. A, it gives perspective. B, it gives a way for you to organize and file away experience in your head, so to speak."
"To finish first you have to first finish. Don't get in a position where you go back to go. What's interesting is that some guy whose grandfather was a lawyer and a judge-hurriedly going to Harvard Law with a wave of veterans-I was willing to go into so many different businesses. I was constantly going right into the other fellow's business and doing better than the other fellow did. The reason it was possible? Self-education- developing mental discipline, big ideas that really work."
"Men, in general, are a sort of scum, very different to anything of which you have an idea."
"I understand that the American people has a right and especially the press, which is not very friendly to us, to make all suppositions and ideas about this fact [suicide by Augusto Martinez] - this disgraced fact."
"I want to create a place where trans people and our allies could come together to share experiences, information and ideas. Being transgender or loving someone who is transgender can be challenging in our society and I hope that members of this site will also use this space as a place to support and encourage each other. Together, we can strengthen our community and open the hearts and minds of others."
"There's a certain pleasure of the life of the mind that cannot be denied. There's a certain pleasure about being around people who enact a playfulness when it comes to the world of ideas."
"All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation."
"The way to be successful in the software world is to come up with breakthrough software, and so whether it's Microsoft Office or Windows, its pushing that forward. New ideas, surprising the marketplace, so good engineering and good business are one in the same."
"We were young, but we had good advice and good ideas and lots of enthusiasm."
"Who is Tom? There is no Tom. If we sell a pair of shoes today, we give away a pair of shoes tomorrow. Originally we thought of "Tomorrow's Shoes," but I could only fit "TOMS" on the label. I had no idea everybody would want to meet him. There is no Tom; it's an idea for a better tomorrow."
"The most powerful idea that's entered the world in the last few thousand years - the idea of grace - is the reason I would like to be a Christian."
"Move fast. A sense of urgency is the one thing you can develop that will separate you from everyone else. When you get a good idea, do it now."
"Good ideas are the backbone of good government."
"If I give you a pfennig, you will be one pfennig richer and I'll be one pfennig poorer. But if I give you an idea, you will have a new idea, but I shall still have it too."
"If you think aficionados of a living Constitution want to bring you flexibility, think again. You think the death penalty is a good idea? Persuade your fellow citizens to adopt it. You want a right to abortion? Persuade your fellow citizens and enact it. That's flexibility."
"Our first ideas of life are generally taken from fiction rather than fact."
