Quotes About Ideas

Ideas without precedent are generally looked upon with disfavor and men are shocked if their conceptions of an orderly world challenged.

Men of ideas and men of action have much to learn from each other, and the truly great are men of both action and abstraction.

The hours of a wise man are lengthened by his ideas.

Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.

Originality is not seen in single words or even in sentences. Originality is the sum total of a man's thinking or his writing.

We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep on humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. Marxism. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information.

The ability of our consciousness to see—not just as a speelycaptor sees (by taking in and recording givens) but identifying things—copper bowls, melodies, faces, beauty, ideas—and making these things available to cognition—that ability, Atamant said, is the ultimate basis of all rational thought.

Ideas are good things to have even if they are old. Even to understand the most advanced theorics requires a lifetime of study. To keep the existing stock of ideas alive requires…all of this." And I waved my arm around at the concent spread out below us.

Actually, they have not been talking so much as mentioning certain ideas and then leaving the other to work through the implications. This is a highly efficient way to communicate;

On a certain kind of diseased mind they exerted the same magnetic pull as they had pre-Zero, and so among a population of millions on the ring you might find one person who'd spent too much time delving into a five-thousand-year-old web archive and become infected with ideas about pre-Zero blacks that he fancied were applicable to Moirans, and so on. It was purely an intellectual curiosity and not at all a factor in real people's lives:

And, obviously, not with ideas of control or power or domination, for these have nothing to do with Love. But…may sex be used for purposes of simple personal gratification? The surprising answer is yes—because "personal gratification" is just another word for Self Love.

Science needs the light of free expression to flourish. It depends on the fearless questioning of authority, and the open exchange of ideas.

The cosmic perspective opens our minds to extraordinary ideas but does not leave them so open that our brains spill out, making us susceptible to believing anything we're told. The

Of all the sciences cultivated by mankind, Astronomy is acknowledged to be, and undoubtedly is, the most sublime, the most interesting, and the most useful. For, by knowledge derived from this science, not only the bulk of the Earth is discovered . . . ; but our very faculties are enlarged with the grandeur of the ideas it conveys, our minds exalted above [their] low contracted prejudices.

where data are sparse, competing ideas abound that are clever and wishful.

Of all the sciences cultivated by mankind, Astronomy is acknowledged to be, and undoubtedly is, the most sublime, the most interesting, and the most useful. For, by knowledge derived from this science, not only the bulk of the Earth is discovered . . . ; but our very faculties are enlarged with the grandeur of the ideas it conveys, our minds exalted above [their] low contracted prejudices. JAMES FERGUSON, 1757†

The cosmic perspective is humble. The cosmic perspective is spiritual—even redemptive—but not religious. The cosmic perspective enables us to grasp, in the same thought, the large and the small. The cosmic perspective opens our minds to extraordinary ideas but does not leave them so open that our brains spill out, making us susceptible to believing anything we're told.

apparently, for residents of Missouri. But it doesn't make for good science. Science is not just about seeing, it's about measuring, preferably with something that's not your own eyes, which are inextricably conjoined with the baggage of your brain. That baggage is more often than not a satchel of preconceived ideas, post-conceived notions, and outright bias.

These philosophically fun ideas usually satisfy nobody. Nonetheless, they remind us that ignorance is the natural state of mind for a research scientist.

Contrary to implicit tenets of the green movement, not all that is natural is beautiful, and not all that is beautiful is natural. Maybe that's why the world needs poets. Not to interpret what is plain and obvious, but to help us take pause and reflect on the beauty of people, places, and ideas—things we might otherwise take for granted. Simple beauty that emanates from simple truths.

these will suffice; who knows but we may be on a slope which leads down to aboriginal savagery. But of this 1 am sure: if we are to escape, we must not yield a foot upon demanding a fair field and an honest race to all ideas.

the air was filled with obscure ideas

The conceit of literary intellectuals is to imagine that other people don't have ideas so that they can assume a superior status by having their own...

When I start running my mouth, I start running facts. I start giving guys numbers. I start giving guys ideas of where I come from and where I work.