Quotes About Ideas

What does Spinoza say in his Ethics?—"Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque eius claram et distinctam formamus ideam." Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it. The prisoner who had lost faith in the future—his future—was doomed.

Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque eius claram et distinctam formamus ideam.

Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can't dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than any words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it.

The novel is the medium which makes it possible for people of ordinary intelligence to communicate their ideas to the world.

The only advise, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions. If this is agreed between us, then I fell at liberty to put forward a few ideas and suggestions because you will not allow them to fatter that independence which is the most important quality that a reader can posses.

But however small it was [the thought], it had, nevertheless, the mysterious property of its kind -put back into the mind, it became at once very exciting, and important; and as it darted and sank, and flashed hither and thither, set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossible to sit still.

How resilient I am; and how fatalistic now; and how little I mind and how much; and how good my novel is; and how tired I am this morning; and how I like praise; and how full of ideas I am; and Tom and Stephen came to tea, and Ray and William dine; and I forgot to describe my interesting talk with Nessa about my criticizing her children; and I left out—I forget what.

beware of ideas...

Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.

Ideas in modern Russia are machine-cut blocks coming in solid colors; the nuance is outlawed, the interval walled up, the curve grossly stepped.

Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash. Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), Russian-born U.S. novelist, poet. Interview in Writers at Work(Fourth Series, ed. by George Plimpton, 1976).

Literature is not a pattern of ideas but a pattern of images. Ideas do not matter much in comparison to a book's imagery and magic. The word, the expression, the image is the true function of literature. Not ideas.

L'estil i l'estructura són l'essència d'un bon llibre; les grans idees són estupideses. El estilo y la estructura son a esencia de un buen libro; las grandes ideas son estupideces

Los innovadores de valor buscan ideas de éxito y saltos sustanciales en valor, sin que les importe demasiado cómo le va al sector.

The theory that any idea that takes more than ten minutes to communicate is probably too complicated to be any good

Once people have that sense that their voice is being recognized, they then are more willing to move to consensus. Once people feel that their ideas are respected, I think that you will find a move toward cooperation. People are much more conciliatory once they feel they've been respected. That's the threshold we need to get to: the idea of respecting different viewpoints. (from the book The NPR Interviews 1995 edited by Robert Siegel)

Nitwit ideas are for emergencies. You use them when you've got nothing else to try. If they work, they go in the Book. Otherwise you follow the Book, which is largely a collection of nitwit ideas that worked.

Mi padre era capaz de asumir con toda naturalidad las ideas más complejas y más novedosas, y al mismo tiempo quedarse extasiado con el vuelo de una mariposa. Mi padre amaba el mundo. Con todas sus consecuencias.

Here is the worst possible way for you to try to figure out if your idea solves somebody's problem: Ask them. The vast majority of entrepreneurs seem to think that explaining their concept in detail to a few people and then asking whether it's a good idea constitutes validation. It does not.

Almost every writer I know dreads the moment when someone tries to give you an idea. It's not that the ideas are bad, just that the relationship between writer and novel is so personal that it's a little like someone trying to play matchmaker for a happily married person.

You could have a million ideas, but they're all worthless if you don't get them done.

and my brain put them together in that way brains sometimes do: pairing the ideas that shouldn't be paired, yet nonetheless were.

But that initial, comet-blazing-across-the-sky, Big Idea is only the beginning. Each book is composed of a mosaic of thousands of little ideas, ideas that invariably come to me at two in the morning when my alarm is set for seven.

The concept of transcending duality, that is, of going beyond the notions of pleasing and distasteful, should be applied to the realm of rhetoric. When you are listening to someone expound on his or her ideas (or if you are reading them as a letter, e-mail or news story) endeavor to stop yourself from forming any opinion of the speaker's views. The goal is neither to agree nor to disagree.