"The progress of our soul is like a perfect poem. It has an infinite idea which, once realised, makes all movements full of meaning and joy."
Read quote
8 likes
Ideas quotes
Ideas
16.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Ideas
Browse quotes that often appear alongside ideas — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Ideas quotes (page 69 of 821)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"As an architect it is very important that you distinguish between different realities. There's the reality of the drawing and the reality of the building. So one could say, or at least it is the common belief that architecture has to be built; I always denied that, because ultimately it is based on an idea. I don't ever need a building to verify my idea. Of course, what with a building is more its vanity and actual physical experience. But I anticipate; I wouldn't even build it if I could not anticipate how it would be."
Read quote
8 likes
"The fundamental idea of modern capitalism is not the right of the individual to possess and enjoy what he has earned, but the ;thesis that the exercise of this right redounds to the general good."
Read quote
8 likes
"Ideas can no more flow backward than can a river."
Read quote
8 likes
"A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words."
Read quote
8 likes
"The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, - a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man. Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm."
Read quote
8 likes
"I had a new idea in my head... this time it's just simply my bedroom, only here colour is to do everything, and, giving by its simplification a grander style to things, is to be suggestive here of rest or of sleep in general. In a word, to look at the picture ought to rest the brain or rather the imagination."
Read quote
8 likes
"What I'm talking about is actually is the Mystery of Being as existential fact. That there is something that haunts this world that can take apart and reduce every single one of us to a mixture of terror and ecstasy, fear and trembling. It is not an idea, that's the primary thing to bear in mind. It's an experience."
Read quote
8 likes
"Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas."
Read quote
8 likes
"A witch who is bored might do ANYTHING. People said things like 'we had to make our own amusements in those days' as if this signified some kind of moral worth, and perhaps it did, but the last thing you wanted a witch to do was get bored and start making her own amusements, because witches sometimes had famously erratic ideas about what was amusing."
Read quote
8 likes
"Nanny's philosophy of life was to do what seemed like a good idea at the time, and do it as hard as possible. It had never let her down."
Read quote
8 likes
"My idea of a good novel was one you made enough money out of to buy a greenhouse."
Read quote
8 likes
"Thought depends absolutely on the stomach, but in spite of that, those who have the best stomachs are not the best thinkers."
Read quote
8 likes
"We are astonished at thought, but sensation is equally wonderful."
Read quote
8 likes
"Man can have only a certain number of teeth, hair and ideas; there comes a time when he necessarily loses his teeth, hair and ideas."
Read quote
8 likes
"Let us leave every man at liberty to seek into him and to lose himself in his ideas."
Read quote
8 likes
"I have not failed. I have successfully discovered 1200 ideas that don't work."
Read quote
8 likes
"The value of a good idea is in using it."
Read quote
8 likes
"If the whole human race lay in one grave, the epitaph on its headstone might well be: 'It seemed like a good idea at the time.'"
Read quote
8 likes
"There is no idea so bad that it cannot be made to look brilliant with the proper application of fonts and color."
Read quote
8 likes