Quotes About Ideas

A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life.

The library is not a shrine for the worship of books. It is not a temple where literary incense must be burned or where one's devotion to the bound book is expressed in ritual. A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life. — Cited in ALA Bulletin, Oct. 1954, p.475

A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life.

Plato had one Big Idea from which everything else derived. He fundamentally defined reality as that which is permanent and unchanging. Only ideas are permanent and unchanging; anything material deteriorates and decays.

When asked what his greatest life achievement was, Norman Thomas replied: "The intellectual theft of every one of my ideas by the Democratic Party."

Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of 'wrong' ideas

Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of "wrong" ideas.

Were it not for frustration and humiliation I suppose the human race would get ideas above its station.

We should have some other collection of knowledge, then, to balance that one out – its inverse, its inner lining, everything we don't know, all the things that can't be captured in any index, can't be handled by any search engine. For the vastness of these contents cannot be traversed from word to word – you have to step in between the words, into the unfathomable abysses between ideas.

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other religions were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.

In a brutal country like ours, where human life is 'cheap', it's stupid to destroy yourself for the sake of your beliefs. Beliefs? High ideas? Only people in rich countries can enjoy such luxuries.

But how shall I get ideas? Keep your wits open! Observe! Observe! Study! Study! But above all, Think! Think! And when a noble image is indelibly impressed upon the mind -- Act!

Whereas in Europe new ideas were forced to compete against other doctrines and attitudes, with the results that people tended towards healthy skepticism about claims to absolute truth, and a climate of pluralism developed, In Russia there was a cultural void. The censor forbade all political expression, so that when ideas were introduced there they easily assumed the status of holy dogma, a panacea for all the world's ills, beyond questioning or indeed the need to test them in real life.

Ideas have enormous consequences in a person's life because you ultimately become what you believe.

The future of social entrepreneurship is no longer about looking up to a select few who have some kind of rare gift for implementing innovative ideas.

People pour themselves into their own doctrines, and God has to blast them out of their preconceived ideas before they can become devoted to Jesus Christ.

Nothing is simpler than to make good poverty of ideas by founding a system, and even a good idea has little value when enunciated by a solemn ass. Only its necessity to life decides the eminence of a doctrine. A doctrine that does not attack and affect the life of the period in its inmost depths is no doctrine and had better not be taught.

There is, moreover, very little sense in preventing young people from giving expression to their ideas on the pretext that they have less experience than have older persons. There are many who may live a thousand years without encountering experience of any value. It could only be in a society of persons equally gifted that such an idea could have any meaning.

When a man ain't got no ideas of his own," said Scipio, "he'd ought to be kind o' careful who he borrows 'em from.

At the dinner table, make "what you're reading" as regular a part of conversation

One of the things everybody seems to want to ask writers is, "Where do you get your ideas?" When people ask me this, my usual response is, "Ideas are the easy part. The hard part is writing them down.

Yes, after every book is finished I decide it is the last one, and then I get an idea in my head and it germinates and before I know it I've started typing and we are off again.

Oh, Oiseau, you want Independence, but that idea weighs you down like handcuffs. First, be free before the idea. Then: make a list of the things in your head and in your stomach that chain you up. That's where it starts, that struggle of yours...

Because an idea lives on after the death of the person.