Quotes About Ideas

So many new ideas are at first strange and horrible, though ultimately valuable that a very heavy responsibility rests upon those who would prevent their dissemination.

The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practice politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.

Los procedimientos existen para impedir el contacto, no para favorecerlo. La gente sin imaginación y sin ideas llena su cabeza con programas y procedimientos. La gente con carácter sabe cuándo prescindir de los procedimientos.

A nightmare is something you awaken from, Peter," she had said. "But thoughts and ideas that remain after its terrors have disappeared are something considerably worse.

Una pesadilla es algo de lo que puedes despertar...pero los pensamientos y las ideas que permanecen después de que tus terrores hayan desaparecido son algo bastante peor.

The great muckraker Upton Sinclair had expressed a deep insight into the relationship between the world of ideas and the world of practical men: 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'34

The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.

Theyd have me out and shoot me the first day they took charge. Anyone like me is intolerably subversive to an authoritarian rgime, because Im not interested in imposing my ideas by force on other people.

When ideas float in our mind without any reflection or regard of the understanding, it is that which the French call revery, our language has scarce a name for it.

We are not at all to wonder [...] that we having but some few superficial ideas of things, discovered to us only by the senses from without, or by the mind, reflecting on what it experiments in itself within, have no knowledge beyond that, much less of the internal constitution, and true nature of things, being destitute of faculties to attain it.

The better to understand the nature, manner, and extent of our knowledge, one thing is carefully to be observed concerning the ideas we have; and that is, that some of them are simple and some complex.

Chapter VII Of Simple Ideas of both Sensation and Reflection 1. Ideas of pleasure and pain. There be other simple ideas which convey themselves into the mind by all the ways of sensation and reflection, viz. pleasure or delight, and its opposite, pain, or uneasiness; power; existence; unity.

But in truth the ideas and images in men's minds are the invisible powers that constantly govern them, and to these they all universally pay a ready submission.

Truth is the marking down in words the agreement or disagreement of ideas as it is. Falsehood is the marking down in words the agreement or disagreement of ideas otherwise than it is. And so far as these ideas, thus marked by sounds, agree to their archetypes, so far only is the truth real. The knowledge of this truth consists in knowing what ideas the words stand for, and the perception of the agreement or disagreement of those ideas, according as it is marked by those words.

It is evident the mind knows not things immediately, but only by the intervention of the ideas it has of them.

In 2019, Fox News' Greg Gutfeld explained to me what he called "the prison of two ideas." He told me that no one can seriously talk to or even be perceived as working with people on the "other side" of the debate, or they will be disowned by their own side. This applies not only to the media but also to politics generally. This surely explains much of the lack of civil, productive debate on guns.

In a truly free society, people in every field would be free to express their views whether called religious or not, and the marketplace of ideas would be free to sort them out.

The power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas

The disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.

The ideas which are here expressed so laboriously are extremely simple and should be obvious. The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.

the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

I do not believe that politics in the long run is about individuals. It is about ideas.