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Quotes about ideas

115 quotes from 89 people

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A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.
John F. Kennedy1917–1963Remarks Recorded for the Opening of a USIA Transmitter at Greenville, North Carolina (8 February 1963) Audio at JFK Library (01:29—01:40) · Text of speech at The American Presidency Project
It is by acts, and not by ideas that people live.
Anatole France1844–1924The Literary Life (1888-1892), Series I: Sérénus
Ideas are everywhere, but knowledge is rare.
Thomas Sowellborn 1930Knowledge and Decisions (1980; 1996), Ch. 1 : The Role of Knowledge
- Knowledge
The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.
John Maynard Keynes1883–1946The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), Preface
I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention — invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.
Agatha Christie1890–1976An Autobiography (1977), Part III: Growing Up, §II
- Work
It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on.
Ursula K. Le Guin1929–2018The Dispossessed (1974), Chapter 3 (p. 72)
You cannot force ideas. Successful ideas are the result of slow growth. Ideas do not reach perfection in a day, no matter how much study is put upon them.
Alexander Graham Bell1847–1922Bell Telephone Talk (1901)
The real pioneers in ideas, in art and in literature have remained aliens to their time, misunderstood and repudiated.
Emma Goldman1869–1940Intellectual Proletarians (1914)
- Art
An idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion.
Nassim Nicholas Talebborn 1960The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 3
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
John Steinbeck1902–1968Interview with Robert van Gelder (April 1947), as quoted in John Steinbeck: A Biography (1994) by Jay Parini
When a language dies, so much more than words are lost. Language is the dwelling place of ideas that do not exist anywhere else. It is a prism through which to see the world.
Robin Wall Kimmererborn 1953Braiding Sweetgrass (2013), p. 258
Opinions cannot survive if one has no chance to fight for them.
Thomas Mann1875–1955The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6
- Debate
An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
Oscar Wilde1854–1900The Epigrams of Oscar Wilde, edited by Alvin Redman (1954)
There are no new ideas, just new ways of giving those ideas we cherish breath and power in our own living.
Audre Lorde1934–1992Learning from the 60s
The best ideas are common property.
Seneca the Younger5 BC–AD 65Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XII: On old age, Line 11.
- Quotations