Quotes About Ideas

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.

You have to have a lot of ideas. First, if you want to make discoveries, it's a good thing to have good ideas. And second, you have to have a sort of sixth sense-the result of judgment and experience-which ideas are worth following up. I seem to have the first thing, a lot of ideas, and I also seem to have good judgment as to which are the bad ideas that I should just ignore, and the good ones, that I'd better follow up.

It is no exaggeration to say that every human being is hypnotized to some extent either by ideas he has uncritically accepted from others or ideas he has repeated to himself or convinced himself are true. These negative ideas have exactly the same effect upon our behavior as the negative ideas implanted into the mind of a hypnotized subject by a professional hypnotist.

All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance - unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion, have the full protection of the guarantees [of the First Amendment].

Business is about people. It's about passion. It's about bold ideas, bold small ideas or bold large ideas.

Cinema is a medium that can translate ideas. But wood can translate ideas, too. You have wood and then you get a chair. Some ideas are for different things.

That's the power of great insights. Insights, not ideas. There's a difference. Ideas, valuable though they may be, are a dime a dozen in business. Insight is much rarer -- and therefore more precious. In the advertising business, a good idea can inspire a great commercial. But a good insight can fuel a thousand ideas, a thousand commercials.

I sell ideas. Actually, if you think about it, everything is really no more than idea. The past is nothing more than a memory, which is one kind of idea. The future is still a hope, another kind of idea. The present is fleeting and becomes a memory before you can put your hands on it. All ideas. I sell ideas.

Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.

I've learned mainly by reading myself. So I don't think I have any original ideas. Certainly, I talk about reading Graham. I've read Phil Fisher. So I've gotten a lot of my ideas from reading. You can learn a lot from other people. In fact, I think if you learn basically from other people, you don't have to get too many new ideas on your own. You can just apply the best of what you see.

A religion, that is, a true religion, must consist of ideas and facts both; not of ideas alone without facts, for then it would be mere Philosophy; - nor of facts alone without ideas, of which those facts are symbols, or out of which they arise, or upon which they are grounded: for then it would be mere History.

Ideas must be put to the test. That's why we make things; otherwise they would be no more than ideas. There is often a huge difference between an idea and its realization. I've had what I thought were great ideas that just didn't work.

The influence of Sun Tzu on other North Vietnamese military strategists is harder to answer. Certainly many of the key leaders in Hanoi were aware of Sun Tzu and made use of his ideas - Vo Nguyen Giap applied many of these ideas in seeking out weak elements in the enemy's defenses, as did Truong Chinh, whose famous treatise, The Resistance Will Win (1947), cited the ideas of Mao Zedong as a model for the North Vietnamese to follow.

I don't think my playing style has really changed over the years; it's just gotten better. I can hear the improvement in comparing older records and later records. I'm referring to soloing ability, to having a better sound, to knowing chords better, and getting rhythmically stronger. It also has to do with ideas - learning how to edit your ideas and being better able to follow ideas out to a logical conclusion.

You can't hurry creativity, so take time to ponder your ideas. Sit back and take time to think things over. That's usually how the best ideas bloom.

I think some of this just feels right. You're in the shower and you come up with a sentence and it's beautiful. You don't know how it's going to fit in the film, but you put it in because it feels right. This is a very long way of saying, so much of it is me feeling like I'm catching ideas rather than coming up with ideas. It's very fluid like that.

I have written 13 books, full of my ideas about a variety of issues - from black women, to hip-hop culture, to the civil rights struggle. Even when I address such figures as Tupac Shakur and Bill Cosby, my ideas are quite evident.

We don't need men with new ideas as much as we need men who will put energy behind the old ideas.

Henry's universe was modeled on the highball. It was a mixture in which half a pint of the fizziest philosophical and scientific ideas all but drowned a small jigger of immediate experience, most of it strictly sexual. Broken reeds are seldom good mixers. They're far too busy with their ideas, their sensuality and their psychosomatic complaints to be able to take an interest in other people - even their own wives and children. They live in a state of the most profound voluntary ignorance, not knowing anything about anybody, but abounding in preconceived opinions about everything.

I want to support young girls who are in their 20s now and tell them: You're not just imagining things. It's tough. Everything that a guy says once, you have to say five times. Girls now are also faced with different problems. I've been guilty of one thing: After being the only girl in bands for 10 years, I learned - the hard way - that if I was going to get my ideas through, I was going to have to pretend that they - men - had the ideas.

First we start with the lyrics. Most of the lyrics are done by Stefan Kaufmann and me. When we have enough lyrics and enough stories we have the lines to make titles. Then we collect all the ideas of everybody in the band and see which ideas fit together the best with the lyrics to get the right atmosphere. That's the way we compose.

I've already got notebooks full of ideas for new music, so I'm gonna kind of nurture that just like I do all of my ideas and perfect it until it's ready and then I'll just let it go.

Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstance with which they cannot contend.

The full implications of feminism will evolve over time, as we organize, experiment, think, analyze, and revise our ideas and strategies in light of our experiences. No theory emerges in full detail overnight; the dominant theories of our day have expanded and changed over many decades. That it will take time should not discourage us. That we might fail to pursue our ideas - given the enormous need for them in society today - is unconscionable.

Unlike liberalism, with its fundamental belief in the long-range power of ideas, conservatism is bound by the stock of ideas inherited at a given time. And since it does not really believe in the power of argument, its last resort is generally a claim to superior wisdom, based on some self-arrogated superior quality.

I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life should malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can't generate. Life becomes stagnant.

There had been observed in this country certain streams of influence which are causing a marked deterioration in our literature, amusements, and social conduct...a nasty Orientalism which had insidiously affected every channel of expression...The fact that these influences are all traceable to one racial source [Judaism] is something to be reckoned with...Our opposition is only in ideas, false ideas, which are sapping the moral stamina of the people.

I always think it's better to take your time and go through a lot of ideas - and dismiss a lot of ideas - before figuring out where to land. It's a good way to care for your audience, too. If you spend hours and hours and days and weeks coming up with the ending, then there's a chance the fans won't figure it out on their own.

Healthy ideas of both left and right, along with totally new ideas, must form a growing united front.

There's only one reason why you write new songs: You get sick of the old songs. It's not that I didn't do anything during the time when I wrote no songs. I was creative, but in another way. I had ideas for songs and collected the ideas.

I definitely learned to communicate with other musicians better. I used to feel so intimidated by guys who can read notes, like, "Oh my god, they're gonna think I'm not even gonna be able to sit at the table." But I've come to see that a lot of these musicians don't know how to read music either, and that made me feel good. I could just come up with ideas or show somebody things and get the ideas across.

I do believe that a belief in God is crazy, but that doesn't mean that the people who believe in it are crazy. Those are two different things. Ideas can be stupid and crazy, and the people who hold those ideas are not necessarily stupid and crazy.

Permission from the government is an expensive commodity. New ideas rarely have this kind of support. Old ideas often have deep legislative connections to defend them against the new.

The things a man believes most profoundly are rarely on the surface of his mind or tongue. Newly acquired notions, decisions based on expediency, the fashionable ideas of the moment are right on top of the pile, ready to be displayed in bright after dinner conversation. But the ideas that make up a man's philosophy of life are somewhere way down below.

She has very strong ideas about family - ideas that probably sound kind of sexist to you. She believes all dhampirs should train and put in time as guardians, but that the women should eventually return home to raise their children together. But not the men? No, he said wryly. She thinks men still need to stay out there and kill Strigoi.

Seriously. It was running out at Rolling Stone. First of all, they didn't feel the need for a dissident conservative voice in a world where certain conservative aspects had become intellectually dominant. I would actually argue against that, but on the surface of it, in the [Bill] Clinton years the market economy triumphed, certain libertarian ideas became ordinary, and certain early-20th-century ideas about centralization of government and economic planning and socialism with a small "s" had obviously gone out the window. The Cold War was over, blah blah blah.

Schools have never been about getting access to information. That's the job of libraries. Schools and universities have nobler missions as gentle gatekeepers. Their role is to control ideas on the loose and to present the best and noblest ideas to the young.

The well-meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me little different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have any merit.

Bottom line, if people don't say what they believe, those ideas and feelings get lost. If they are lost often enough, those ideas and feelings never return.

Our ideas of self are created by identification. The less we cling to ideas of self, the freer and happier we will be.

Scientists surely have a special responsibility. It is their ideas that form the basis of new technology. They should not be indifferent to the fruits of their ideas. They should forgo experiments that are risky or unethical.

Ideas are interesting to me, and religions are a place where ideas have been very subtly embodied for thousands of years. All literature started as sacred literature.

Somebody's buying these treasury bills at 1/20th of one percent. I mean we consuming about $2 billion a day of goods and services beyond what we're producing.And it reflects American's consumption ideas rather than its savings ideas.

Ideas can be killed only by other ideas!

Abandon false ideas, that is all. There is no need of true ideas. There aren't any.

All ideas grow out of other ideas

The mind being, as I have declared, furnished with a great number of the simple ideas conveyed in by the senses, as they are found in exterior things, or by reflection on its own operations, take notice, also, that a certain number of these simple ideas go constantly together... which, by inadvertency, we apt afterward to talk of and condier as one simple idea.

Without minute neatness of execution, the sublime cannot exist! Grandeur of ideas is founded on precision of ideas.