Famously Said Random quote

Topics/Thinking

Quotes about ideas

115 quotes from 89 people

Most readBy personPage 6 of 8

In a battle between force and an idea, the latter always prevails.
Ludwig von Mises1881–1973Liberalism (1927), Ch. 1: The Foundations of Liberal Policy § 10. The Argument of Fascism
- Power
An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.
Thomas Paine1737–1809Agrarian Justice (1797)
- War & Peace
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
Those who are really convinced that they have made progress in science would not demand freedom for the new views to continue side by side with the old, but the substitution of the new views for the old.
Vladimir Lenin1870–1924What is to be Done? (1902)
- Science
Imagination is the highest kite that can fly.
Lauren Bacall1924–2014Lauren Bacall By Myself and Then Some (2005)
Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.
Thomas Carlyle1795–1881Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855), Richter.
Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.
Walt Disney1901–1966The Quotable Walt Disney (2001)
- Entertainment
Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.
Jean Cocteau1889–1963Diary of an Unknown (1988)
The measure of greatness in a scientific idea is the extent to which it stimulates thought and opens up new lines of research.
Paul Dirac1902–1984The scientific work of Georges Lemaître (1968), P.A.M
- Science
People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around — the music and the ideas.
Bob Dylanborn 1941The Guardian (13 February 1992)
- Music
We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.
Niels Bohr1885–1962Said to Wolfgang Pauli at Columbia University (1958), as reported by Freeman Dyson, ‘Innovation in Physics’, Scientific American (September 1958)
- Science
Only a crisis⁠—actual or perceived⁠—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.
Milton Friedman1912–2006Capitalism and Freedom (1962), preface to the 1982 edition, p. ix
- Change
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
Now the world in general doesn’t know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.
W. Somerset Maugham1874–1965Great Novelists and Their Novels (1948)
- Anger
To apply oneself to great inventions, starting from the smallest beginnings, is no task for ordinary minds; to divine that wonderful arts lie hid behind trivial and childish things is a conception for superhuman talents.
Galileo Galilei1564–1642Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632)
- Genius