An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.

Ideas do not need to be esoteric to be original or exciting.

Bargaining makes you come up with the best ideas.

Comments outnumber ideas.

It must be something voluntary, something self induced – like getting drunk, or talking yourself into believing some piece of foolishness because it happens to be in the Scriptures. And then look at their idea...

The power of an idea is never to be underestimated. Many a thought has survived long after its host has ceased to be. It is the power of an idea that no shield can defend...

If there are those who differ with the president on this, the president respects their opinion and respects their ideas and respects their thoughts. He listens. He listens carefully. In the end, the president will...

The novel is about five students of classics who are studying with a classics professor, and they take the ideas of the things that they’re learning from him a bit too seriously, with terrible consequences.

What does the doctrine of American exceptionalism empower the United States to do? Nothing more than to act better than traditional empires – committed to looting and conquest – have done. So that’s American exceptionalism:...

Molecular biology has routinely taken problematic things under its wing without altering core ideas.

There’s only one thing in life more dangerous than a bad idea, and that’s a good one.

As Oscar Wilde should have said, when bad ideas have nowhere else to go, they emigrate to America and become university courses.

My ideas are not meant to suggest dreams or reality, but a surreal quality.

Coincidence is important, the convergence of different ideas.

[M]rs. Miniver was beginning to feel more than a little weary of exchanging ideas (especially political ones) and of hearing other people exchange theirs. It’s all very well, she reflected, when the ideas have had...

It often feels like a tremendous amount of work is required to get an idea moving forward, like pushing a train uphill. But at a certain point, the thing takes on its own momentum, and...

Yeah, right. Instead of watching TV, we’ll practice our weird magical powers. Great. What’s next? Zooming around on flying carpets?

Ideas stand in the corner and laugh while we fight over them.

Der Vorrath von Vorstellungen, den ein Geist hat, macht seine Welt aus.

I am interested in ideas, not merely in visual products

We do not learn for the benefit of anyone, we learn to unlearn ignorance.

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.

So many people have the TV or radio constantly turned on “for company,” or spend their time reading trashy novels, aimlessly surfing the Net, and so on. Then suddenly one day you are old or...

Right. So no plans at all then?”Jenna frowned. “Other than rocking in the fetal position for a while?””Yeah, I was thinking about taking one of those showers where you huddle in the corner fully clothed...

Information can be harmful when you’re not ready for it. [‘The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes’]

Ideas matter—and philosophy is the art of thinking about them rigorously. In my view, that should be done in as public a forum as possible.

88.People wonder why so many writers come to live in Paris. I’ve been living ten years in Paris and the answer seems simple to me: because it’s the best place to pick ideas. Just like...

No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.

Literature, art, science, and religion degenerate when polemical struggle supplants the independent creation of ideas.

I have reached the point where I know that as long as I sit down to write, the ideas will come. What they will be, I don’t know.

The poorest parts of the world are by and large the places in which one can best view the worst of medicine and not because doctors in these countries have different ideas about what constitutes...

There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man. —

In the realm of ideas it is better to let the mind sally forth, even if some precious preconceptions suffer a mauling.

The world rides through space on the back of a turtle. This is one of the great ancient world myths, found wherever men and turtles were gathered together; the four elephants were an Indo-European sophistication....

Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds.

When people ask me if I’m liberal or conservative, I say, ‘Yeah.’ I’m both of them. To be a liberal means to be open-minded and generous and open to new ideas. And to be conservative...

An idea weighs nothing, except on the mind.

Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.

Living in a bookshop is like living in a warehouse of explosives. Those shelves are ranked with the most furious combustibles in the world–the brains of men.

People tend to think that mathematicians always work in sterile conditions, sitting around and staring at the screen of a computer, or at a ceiling, in a pristine office. But in fact, some of the...

Uniform ideas originating among entire peoples unknown to each other must have a common ground of truth.

The truth is sometimes a poor competitor in the market place of ideas – complicated, unsatisfying, full of dilemmas, always vulnerable to misinterpretation and abuse.

Somebody once asked me where I come up with my stuff. I replied, “Who knows? Where does yellow snow come from? It’s just a gift from God I guess.

I have tried to be a man of letters in love with ideas in order to be a wiser and more loving person, hoping to leave the world just a little better than I found...

The Berlin Wall wasn’t the only barrier to fall after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Traditional barriers to the flow of money, trade, people and ideas also...

There’s a kid or some kids somewhere. I’ll never know them. They’re particle-puzzle-cubing right now. They might be mini-misanthropes from Moosefart, Montana. They might be demi-dystopians from Dogdick, Delaware. They dig my demonic dramas. The...

The most dangerous ideas are not those that challenge the status quo. The most dangerous ideas are those so embedded in the status quo, so wrapped in a cloud of inevitability, that we forget they...

It’s not enough to fill your head with wondrous ideas—you must initiate action.

An idea? An idea won’t get you nothing but another idea. You need money, cash, to make anything happen in this doggone world.

Pakistan not only means freedom and independence but the Muslim Ideology which has to be preserved, which has come to us as a precious gift and treasure and which, we hope other will share with...