Idea Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

we know, and what we really know, practical assent and simulated ignorance... allows us to live with ideas which, if we truly put them to the test, ought to upset our whole life.

I like well your idea of issuing treasury notes bearing interest, because I am persuaded they would soon be withdrawn from circulation and locked up in vaults & private hoards. It would put it in the power of every man to lend his 100. or 1000 d. tho' not able to go forward on the great scale, and be the most advantageous way of obtaining a loan. The other idea of creating a National bank, I do not concur in, because it seems now decided that Congress has not that power, (altho' I sincerely wish they had it exclusively) and because I think there is already a vast redundancy, rather than a scarcity of paper medium.

Thomas Jefferson

I could not possibly exist with the nature I actually have, that is, one endowed with the idea of God, unless there really is a God; the very God, I mean, of whom I have an idea.

René Descartes

As National Socialists we see our program in our flag. In the red we see the social idea of the movement.

The past is only so heroic as we see it. It is the canvas on which our idea of heroism is painted, and so, in one sense, the dim prospectus of our future field.

Henry David Thoreau

Leaving the complications of the human breakfast-table out of account, in an elemental sense, the egg only exists to produce the chicken. But the chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself, to praise God, and even to suggest ideas to a French dramatist. Being a conscious life, he is, or may be, valuable in himself.

G. K. Chesterton

We have theories of races and of functions, but scarcely yet a remote approach to an idea of creation. We are now so far from the road to truth, that religious teachers dispute and hate each other, and speculative men are esteemed unsound and frivolous.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.

General ideas are essences. They are our gods: they round and ennoble the most partial and sordid way of living.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.

If I meet the Christian Deity, I am lost: He is a tyrant and as such, is full of ideas of vengeance; His Bible speaks of nothing but fearful punishments. I never loved Him! I could never even believe that anyone did love Him sincerely. He is devoid of pity.... He will punish me in some abominable manner.

I am not one who, to quote an American author, believes that democracy and enterprise have finally won the battle of ideas - that we have therefore arrived at the end of history, and there is nothing left to fight for. That would be unutterably complacent, indeed foolish. There will always be threats to freedom, not only from frontal assaults, but more insidiously by erosion from within.

Margaret Thatcher

There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every idea appears at first as a strange visitor, and when it begins to be realized, it is hardly distinguishable from fantasy.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The idea came like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed.

I must rebel against the idea that millions of Indians, who were Hindus, the other day, changed their nationality on adopting Islam as their religion.

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Bush is now undermining the United Nations. He is acting outside it, not withstanding the fact that the United Nations was the idea of President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Both Bush, as well as Tony Blair, are undermining an idea which was sponsored by their predecessors. They do not care. Is it because the secretary-general of the United Nations [Ghanaian Kofi Annan] is now a black man? They never did that when secretary-generals were white.

If the new Universal History were also read, it would give a connected idea of human affairs, so far as it goes, which should be followed by the best modern histories, particularly of our mother country; then of these colonies; which should be accompanied with observations on their rise, increase, use to Great Britain, encouragements and discouragements, the means to make them flourish, and secure their liberties.

Benjamin Franklin

I have no idea. People who boast about their IQ are losers.

Stephen Hawking

I wish there were some cure, like the lover's leap, for all heads of which some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular possession.

To my mind, the "Evolutionary Hypothesis" tends to weaken belief in the "immortality of personal consciousness" by revealing a cause for the growth of such an idea quite independently of its truth.

Alexander Graham Bell

You have to put the idea into action. If you don't have the motivation and the enthusiasm, your great idea will simply sit on top of your desk or inside your head and go nowhere.

"I've got a sort of idea," said Pooh at last, "but I don't suppose it's a very good one."
"I don't suppose it is either," said Eeyore.

What does it mean for a painter to paint in the manner of So-and-So or to actually imitate someone else? What's wrong with that? On the contrary, it's a good idea. You should constantly try to paint like someone else. But the thing is, you can't! You would like to. You try. But it turns out to be a botch... And it's at the very moment you make a botch of it that you're yourself.