Quotes About Ideas

Perhaps it is weariness that causes seers not to act on what they see; for whereas the wisdom of the world can be vast, it includes the many futilities. Ideas do not have legs with which to run and hands with which to craft. They are wisps of smoke floating into a universe of pain and ignorance that overwhelm the capacity of one small human body and the mind trapped inside it.

There may be no perfect frame waiting to be found, but, argues the cognitive linguist George Lakoff, it is absolutely essential to have a compelling alternative frame if the old one is ever to be debunked. Simply rebutting the dominant frame will, ironically, only serve to reinforce it. And without an alternative to offer, there is little chance of entering, let alone winning, the battle of ideas.

They wanted to forget that there ever had been, in Europe, any other civilization at all. There was so much beauty they had not made, so many books they had not written, so many records of wars in which they had not fought, and so many ideas of human behavior which were anathema to them.

This exceptional ability to interconnect observations and ideas from different disciplines lies at the very heart of Leonardo's approach to learning and research.

Books are the most wonderful friends in the world. When you meet them and pick them up, they are always ready to give you a few ideas. When you put them down, they never get mad; when you take them up again, they seem to enrich you all the more.

There is nothing easier than lopping off heads and nothing harder than developing ideas.

Knowledge by itself is not power, but it holds the potential for power if we use it a s a guide for action. Truth will always be defeated by tyranny unless the people are willing to step forward and put their lives into the battle. The future belongs, not to ideas, but to people who act on those ideas.

We may say, roughly, that a mathematical idea is 'significant' if it can be connected, in a natural and illuminating way, with a large complex of other mathematical ideas. Thus a serious mathematical theorem, a theorem which connects significant ideas, is likely to lead to important advances in mathematics itself and even in other sciences.

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not. "Immortality" may be a silly word, but probably a mathematician has the best chance of whatever it may mean.

The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's must be beautiful; the ideas like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.

The beauty of a mathematical theorem depends a great deal on its seriousness, as even in poetry the beauty of a line may depend to some extent on the significance of the ideas which it contains.

It seems that mathematical ideas are arranged somehow in strata, the ideas in each stratum being linked by a complex of relations both among themselves and with those above and below. The lower the stratum, the deeper (and in general more difficult) the idea. Thus the idea of an 'irrational' is deeper than that of an integer; and Pythagoras's theorem is, for that reason, deeper than Euclid's.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a novel about work, and I would be remiss if I did not thank my colleagues, whose ideas, skills, questions, observations, provocations, encouragements, witticisms, letters, phone calls, Zooms, texts, PowerPoint presentations, and occasional course corrections have improved this book enormously.

loathe collectible books anyway. People getting all moony over particular paper carcasses. It's the ideas that matter, man.

Yo odio los libros de coleccionista. Toda esa gente que se vuelve loca por armazones de papel. Lo importante son las ideas, amigo. Las palabras.

I loathe collectible books anyway. People getting all moony over particular paper carcasses. It's the ideas that matter, man. The words

I loathe collectible books anyway. People getting all moony over particular paper carcasses. It's the ideas that matter, man. The words," Daniel Parish says.

I want to know your ideas," Sam said. "I really want to know them. I love hearing your ideas. That's my favorite thing in the world.

And so you face a curious dilemma, one you will face often if you choose to live a life of integrity and challenge. Is it better to consider all ideas, to determine which one seems to you most reasonable and worthy, and then to speak your mind? Or is it better to follow old patterns and to acquiesce quietly into a general conformity?

From many things that Adams and his contemporaries wrote, it is clear that they did not use the word "religion" to exclude Christian ideas or principles as some do today. The founders did not make institutional religion a part of the government, but they never thought of excluding Christian principles.

An hour spent in any bookstore will also tune you in to what the world is thinking (and writing about), what is hot, what is popular, what the trends are. Just browsing, without even buying anything, is an education in itself.

We can increase insights by exposing ourselves to lots of different ideas that might help us form new connections.

Martin Chalfie is a perfect example of the experience most people have of "connecting the dots" and solving a problem by being exposed to more ideas. Like Chalfie, we get a new piece of information that combines with other information we already have, and, presto, we make a discovery.