Quotes About Ideas

If you think of doing something in New York City, you can be certain that at least two thousand other people have the same thought. And of the two thousand who do, about one thousand will be standing in line waiting to do it.

The history of ideas is the history of the grudges of solitary men.

Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element - direct observation. Do not learn anything about this subject of mine - the French Revolution. Learn instead what I think that Enicharmon thought Urizen thought Gutch thought Ho-Yung thought Chi-Bo-Sing thought Lafcadio Hearn thought Carlyle thought Mirabeau said about the French Revolution.

Ideas are elusive, slippery things. Best to keep a pad of paper and a pencil at your bedside, so you can stab them during the night before they get away.

DAY ACTION IDEAS FOR PUTTING THE STRANGEST SECRET TO WORK FOR YOU

In this regard it is perhaps appropriate to suggest instead that science fiction is the literature where we keep the beautiful ideas and throw out the data . . . namely, where we are free to conjure new realities that conform to our ideas. So it is that I am often unimpressed when people claim that science fiction anticipates science. It doesn't. The imagination of the natural world far exceeds that of even the most gifted science fiction writer.

Air Force regulations required that the appropriate checklist would be open and in hand for whatever activity was taking place. In reality the books stayed in a G-suit pocket or a canvas carryall bag throughout the flight. The only time anyone ever opened up the checklist was when they were in deep shit and totally out of ideas.

Ah, good conversation — there's nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.

I find more and more that I am a man of the 1920s. I still expect something exciting. Drinks, animated conversation, gaiety: the uninhibited exchange of ideas.

Men love their ideas more than their lives. And the more preposterous the idea, the more eager they are to die for it. And to kill for it.

I'd sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse.

One of the challenges of life is to be open-minded about new ideas and new possibilities.

I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent. Curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas. —Albert Einstein

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

being right all the time acquires a huge importance in education, and there is this terror of being wrong. The ego is so tied to being right that later on in life you are reluctant to accept that you are ever wrong, because you are defending not the idea but your self-esteem. (...) this terror of being wrong means that people have enormous difficulties in changing ideas.

I prefer to think of them as the Ten Suggestions.

Teaching should be full of ideas instead of stuffed with facts.

Dreams are only thoughts you didn't have time to think about during the day.

Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism, to steal ideas from many is research.

Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.

Our perceptions and the ideas they evoke continuously generate a parallel description in terms of language. That description is also constructed with images. All the words we use, in any language, spoken, written, or appreciated by touch, as in Braille, are made of mental images. This is true of the auditory images of the sounds of letters and words and inflections and of the corresponding visual symbol/letter codings that stand for those sounds.

All mind is made of images

The only way someone can be of help to you is in challenging your ideas. If you're ready to listen and if you're ready to be challenged, there's one thing that you can do, but no one can help you. What is this most important thing of all? It's called self-observation.