Quotes About Ideas

whenever we have a new idea—instead of searching for ways to prove our ideas wrong, we usually attempt to prove them correct.

That brings us back to the default mode. "When your mind is at rest, what it is really doing is bouncing thoughts back and forth," Andreasen says. "Your association cortices are always running in the background, but when you are not focused on some task—for example, when you are doing something mindless, like driving—that's when your mind is most free to roam. That's why that is when you most actively create new ideas.

The goal of the Progressive indoctrinators was not to impose a specific system of ideas on the student, but to destroy his capacity to hold any firm ideas, on any subject.

The dominant, mystical ideas of such cultures represent a nonrational approach to the world, not an antirational approach. In essence, the spokesmen of these earlier times did not know what reason is, or, therefore, what it makes possible in human life.

To satisfy this need, one must recognize that philosophy is a system of ideas. By its nature as an integrating science, it cannot be a grab bag of isolated issues. All philosophic questions are interrelated. One may not, therefore, raise any such questions at random, without the requisite context. If one tries the random approach, then questions (which one has no means of answering) simply proliferate in all directions.

Fundamental philosophic ideas are almost always profoundly controversial. They are not bromides; they are not self-evident, unless it's like "A is A." They involve tremendous abstraction and tremendous complexity. And therefore, if you find that you can zip them off in one or two sentences that absolutely no one could ever question, the chances are very strong that you did something wrong, that you missed out on what this idea actually says.

During the twenties, Germany's youngsters (both rightist and leftist) were in the vanguard of the growing rebellion against the Weimar Republic. The youngsters were rebelling against the establishment in the name of every fundamental idea which they had been taught by every influential spokesman of that establishment

Books, I knew then and now, give body to our ideas and imaginations, make them flesh in the world; a bookstore is the city where our fleshed-out inner selves reside.

Dreams are where we will meet again. In love, in yearning, in fear. Dreams, like countries, are ideas: all reality gestates first inside a dream. Dreams are information for those who read their tea leaves come morning. They are tiny little maps of souls. Of every secret, we push aside while we are awake.....Dreams know you better than you know yourself.

The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas, and throw the bad ones away.

If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away.

In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation.

The academic world is competitive. For ideas, grants, students, funding.

Society goes on and on and on. It is the same with ideas.

I believe that cinema picks up ideas from society and not the other way round.

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

Novel technologies and ideas that impinge on human biology and their perceived impact on human values have renewed strains in the relationship between science and society.

One of the most original and most important ideas advanced by Hayek is the role of the 'division of knowledge' in economic society.

Scientific progress consists in the development of new concepts.

Creating ideas that spread and connecting the disconnected are the two pillars of our new society, and both of them require the posture of the artist

We must seek to be intellectually inclusive, just as we seek to be culturally inclusive. Ideas come and go - that's what makes a free society so vital.

Political correctness is one of the engines of nannyism. Allowing and even encouraging 'offensive' ideas is vital for the intellectually health of a free society.

The possibility of stepping into a higher plane is quite real for everyone. It requires no force or effort or sacrifice. It involves little more than changing our ideas about what is normal.

Your ideas need not have anything to do with reality. Making conclusions is a sure way of not enhancing our perception.