Quotes About Ideas

I have lots of ideas. Trouble is, most of them suck.

But when you're in front of an audience and you make them laugh at a new idea, you're guiding the whole being for the moment. No one is ever more him/herself than when they really laugh. Their defenses are down. It's very Zen-like, that moment. They are completely open, completely themselves when that message hits the brain and the laugh begins. That's when new ideas can be implanted. If a new idea slips in at that moment, it has a chance to grow.

If there is an angel who records the sorrows of men as well as their sins, he knows how many and deep are the sorrows that spring from false ideas for which no man is culpable.

Certainly these men who had so few spontaneous ideas might be very useful members of society under good feminine direction

Religious ideas have the fate of melodies, which, once set afloat in the world, are taken up by all sorts of instruments, some of them woefully coarse, feeble, or out of tune, until people are in danger of crying out that the melody itself is detestable.

Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration?

Could there be a slenderer, more insignificant thread in human history than this consciousness of a girl, busy with her small inferences of the way in which she could make her life pleasant?—in a time, too, when ideas were with fresh vigor making armies of themselves, and the universal kinship was declaring itself fiercely;

Oh, he dreams footnotes, and they run away with all his brains.

After all has been said that can be said about the widening influence of ideas, it remains true that they would hardly be such strong agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The great world-struggle of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in the struggle of the affections, seeking a justification for love and hope.

If you put him a-horseback on politics, I warn you of the consequences. It was all very well to ride on sticks at home and call them ideas.

Le nostre passioni non vivono l'una separata dall'altra, in camere serrate a chiave, ma, rivestite del loro modesto guardaroba di idee, portano i loro viveri a un tavolo comune e mangiano assieme, nutrendosi delle provviste comuni a seconda del loro appetito.

Contrary to popular myth, great teams are not characterized by an absence of conflict. On the contrary, in my experience, one of the most reliable indicators of a team that is continually learning is the visible conflict of ideas. In great teams conflict becomes productive."1

When you think you just lack words, what you really lack are ideas. Ideas come in the form of frames. When the frames are there, the words come readily.

Since most of our moral understanding comes, via metaphor, from a broad range of other domains of experience, and since we apply those metaphors to a number of different experiential domains, we should be wary of trying to compartmentalize ethics. The cross-domain mappings of the metaphors suggest the intricate web of connections that impose our moral ideas on other aspects of our lives, including considerations that are technical, scientific, political, aesthetic, religious, and social.

New ideas are never entirely new. They must make use of ideas already present in the culture. No conspiracy of the ultrarich explains why conservative ideas make sense to people and what sense they make. Fourth

In an era when so many women are stepping up to lead, I'm hoping people will focus on our ideas and accomplishments instead of our appearance.

One column of truth cannot hold an institution of ideas from falling into ignorance. It is wiser that a person of prudence and purpose save his strength for battles that can be won.

Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated.

The tax on capital gains in Canada is twice as high as in communist China and we wonder why our ideas are being held back.

Words and ideas work in the short run to get you through school and to impress educators and employers. But they do not work in the long run or in the deep run. We soon find ourselves separate and without wonder.

Tina Fey and I have 15 things in development: 'Laverne and Shirley', 'Starsky and Hutch 3', 'Cagney and Lacey', 'Wonder Twins Activate From Two Hot Broads', 'Little House on the Prairie: The Musical: The Movie'.

I want big ideas to have aesthetic relevance. I want to tickle people's intellectual sensibilities and instill a sense of wonder.

But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience.

The big ideas always come in flashes. I don't really craft stories that much. I genuinely don't know where these people come from, and I've often wondered if writing is just a socially acceptable form of madness.