Famously Said Random quote

Topics/Thinking

Quotes about ideas

115 quotes from 89 people

Most readBy personPage 4 of 8

My worthy friend, gray are all theories,
And green alone Life’s golden tree.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749–1832Faust (1808), Scene IV, spoken by MephistophelesIn context
- Experience
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
Great theories are expansive; failures mire us in dogmatism and tunnel vision.
Stephen Jay Gould1941–2002Eight Little Piggies (1993), “More Light on Leaves”, p. 165
- Science
Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
SHSydney J. Harris1917–1986Strictly Personal (1953), “Purely Personal Prejudices”
- Youth
A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. It has come to you over a new route, by a new and express train of associations.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.1809–1894The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858), Ch. 1
- Thinking
One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas.
Victor Hugo1802–1885
One can resist the invasion of an army but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.
Victor Hugo1802–1885
I simply claim that what ideas I have, I have a right to express; and that any man who denies that right to me is an intellectual thief and robber. That is all.
Robert G. Ingersoll1833–1899The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child (1877)
- Freedom
It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter From Thomas Jefferson to the Rev. James Madison, 19 July 1788
- Truth & Lies
He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to Isaac McPherson (1813)
- Knowledge
That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II (1770) p. 181
- Clever Jabs
We need men who can dream of things that never were.
John F. Kennedy1917–1963Speech delivered to the Dail (Parliament of Ireland) (28 June 1963)
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
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
A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.
John Maynard Keynes1883–1946The End of Laissez-faire (1926), Ch. 1
- History