Quotes on Ideas
“I pretend not to teach, but to inquire; and therefore cannot but confess here again,–that external and internal sensation are the only passages I can find of knowledge to the understanding. These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this DARK ROOM. For, methinks, the understanding is not much unlike a closet wholly shut from light, with only some little openings left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things without: which, would they but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom, Ideas
“Reverie is when ideas float in our mind without reflection or regard of the understanding.”
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom, Ideas
“The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom, Ideas, Power
“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”
Victor Hugo, Ideas, Power
“No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.”
Victor Hugo, Ideas, Strength
“I welcome and seek your ideas, but do not bring me small ideas; bring me big ideas to match our future.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ideas
“Consensus: “The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner: ‘I stand for consensus?”
Margaret Thatcher, Ideas
“If you have one of those impulses that are pulling you, if you don’t marry it with an action within 5 seconds, you pull the emergency break and kill the idea.”
Mel Robbins, Goals, Ideas
"There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever."
Thomas Edison, Ideas, Science, Anger and Fighting
"Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless."
Thomas Edison, Ideas
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
Thomas Edison, Ideas
"To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk."
Thomas Edison, Ideas
"Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That's not the place to become discouraged."
Thomas Edison, Ideas
"The value of an idea lies in the using of it."
Thomas Edison, Ideas
"To have a great idea, have a lot of them."
Thomas Edison, Ideas
"Great ideas originate in the muscles."
Thomas Edison, Ideas
"Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work."
Thomas Edison, Ideas
"Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work."
Thomas Edison, Ideas
"Anything that won't sell, I don't want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success."
Thomas Edison, Ideas, Business, Success
"I never did anything by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work."
Thomas Edison, Ideas, Goals, Work
"When I have fully decided that a result is worth getting I go ahead of it and make trial after trial until it comes."
Thomas Edison, Ideas, Goals
"I start where the last man left off."
Thomas Edison, Ideas, Goals
“Abstract relations of ideas are the object of curiosity, not of volition.”
David Hume, Ideas
“The memory, senses, and understanding are, therefore, all of them founded on the imagination, or the vivacity of our ideas.”
― ‘A Treatise Of Human Nature’.
David Hume, Ideas
“College isn't the place to go for ideas.”
Helen Keller, Intelligence/Wisdom, Ideas
"You do things when the opportunities come along. I've had periods in my life when I've had a bundle of ideas come along, and I've had long, dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won't do a damn thing."
Warren Buffet, Opportunities, Ideas
"That’s the buzz for me, the creative process. An idea is never as good as when it’s in your head. And then it’s just how little you ruin it."
Ricky Gervais, Ideas
"Sometimes we drug ourselves with dreams of new ideas. The head will save us. The brain alone will set us free. But there are no new ideas waiting in the wings to save us as women, as human. There are only old and forgotten ones, new combinations, extrapolations and recognitions from within ourselves—along with the renewed courage to try them out."
Audre Lorde, Ideas, Freedom, Intelligence/Wisdom, Sex
"Unity implies the coming together of elements which are, to begin with, varied and diverse in their particular natures."
Audre Lorde, Ideas
"We wish the old things because we cannot understand the new, and we are always seeking after that gorgeousness which belongs to things already on the decline, without recognising in the humble simplicity of new ideas the germ which shall develop in the future."
Maria Montessori, Society, Ideas
"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them."
George Orwell, Ideas
"Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy. It's purpose is to discern the consequences of various ways of allocating resources which have alternative uses. It has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature."
Thomas Sowell, Ideas
"Virtually no idea is too ridiculous to be accepted, even by very intelligent and highly educated people, if it provides a way for them to feel special and important. Some confuse that feeling with idealism."
Thomas Sowell, Ideas
"Can you cite one speck of hard evidence of the benefits of "diversity" that we have heard gushed about for years? Evidence of its harm can be seen — written in blood — from Iraq to India, from Serbia to Sudan, from Fiji to the Philippines. It is scary how easily so many people can be brainwashed by sheer repetition of a word."
Thomas Sowell, Ideas
"Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous. Among people of every race, color, and creed, all around the world, socialism has led to hunger in countries that used to have surplus food to export.... Nevertheless, for many of those who deal primarily in ideas, socialism remains an attractive idea -- in fact, seductive. Its every failure is explained away as due to the inadequacies of particular leaders."
Thomas Sowell, Ideas
"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it."
Thomas Sowell, Ideas
"The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man's new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit. The only method compatible with our notions of civilization and the race is to prevent the breeding of the unfit by sterilization and the deliberate guidance of the mating instinct, Several European countries and a number of states of the American Union sterilize the criminal and the insane. This is not sufficient. The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny. A century from now it will no more occur to a normal person to mate with a person eugenically unfit than to marry a habitual criminal."
Tesla, Ideas
"The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention. It is the most important product of his creative brain."
Tesla, Ideas
"As I uttered these inspiring words the idea came like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand the diagram shown six years later in my address before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and my companion understood them perfectly. The images I saw were wonderfully sharp and clear and had the solidity of metal and stone, so much so that I told him, "See my motor here; watch me reverse it." I cannot begin to describe my emotions. Pygmalion seeing his statue come to life could not have been more deeply moved. A thousand secrets of nature which I might have stumbled upon accidentally, I would have given for that one which I had wrested from her against all odds and at the peril of my existence ..."
Tesla, Ideas
"Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents."
Tesla, Ideas
"My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get an idea I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements, and operate the device entirely in my mind."
Tesla, Ideas
"It is not a dream, it is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering, only expensive — blind, faint-hearted, doubting world! [...] Humanity is not yet sufficiently advanced to be willingly led by the discoverer's keen searching sense. But who knows? Perhaps it is better in this present world of ours that a revolutionary idea or invention instead of being helped and patted, be hampered and ill-treated in its adolescence — by want of means, by selfish interest, pedantry, stupidity and ignorance; that it be attacked and stifled; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the strife of commercial existence. So do we get our light. So all that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combatted, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle."
Tesla, Ideas
"You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension."
Tesla, Ideas
"Invention is the most important product of man's creative brain. The ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of human nature to human needs."
Tesla, Ideas
"We crave for new sensations but soon become indifferent to them. The wonders of yesterday are today common occurrences."
Tesla, Ideas
"All that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combated, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle."
Tesla, Ideas
"I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success . . . Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything."
Tesla, Ideas
"I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men."
Tesla, Ideas
"Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born."
Tesla, Ideas
"I don't care that they stole my idea . . I care that they don't have any of their own."
Tesla, Ideas
"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."
Steve Jobs, Ideas
"Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains."
Steve Jobs, Ideas
"Don’t get hung up on who owns the idea. Pick the best one, and let’s go."
Steve Jobs, Ideas
"I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them, if that's what you're asking. Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves."
John Wayne, Ideas
"On no subject are our ideas more warped and pitiable than on death. ... Let children walk with nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life, and that the grave has no victory, for it never fights."
John Muir, Nature, Life, Death, Ideas
"A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death."
JFK- John F. Kennedy, Ideas
"Paris is always a good idea."
Audrey Hepburn, Ideas
"The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class."
Karl Marx, Ideas
"I have lots of ideas. Trouble is, most of them suck."
George Carlin, Ideas
"You'll find boredom where there is the absence of a good idea."
Earl Nightingale, Ideas
"Everything begins with an idea."