Quotes about ideas

I’m a guy who doesn’t understand intangible stakes. I know some would argue that I have a set of values I take pretty seriously, but if I can’t eat it or spend it or make it go purr in the night, I don’t know what to do with it. It’s a weakness, a blind spot. Sometimes I forget that there are guys willing to get killed over ideas.

True ideology has vanished, replaced by fear and fantasy. The right wing wants corporate control and a return to a past that never existed. The left wing wants government control and a future that will never exist. Both groups lose sight of the essential questions: how can the individual speak and think and create freely? New ideas are the only evolutionary force that will save us from destruction.

The power of ideas to transform the world is itself accelerating.

To this day I remain convinced of this basic philosophy: no matter what quandries we face...there is an idea that can enable us to prevail.

This, then, was the religion that I was raised with: veneration for human creativity and the power of ideas.

He who enlists a man's mind wields a power even greater than the sword or the scepter.

They opposed brute force to reason and philosophy, and battalions of foreign mercenaries to ideas. As if ideas were to be impaled on bayonets!

It is much easier to burn men than to burn their opinions.

The best of ideas is hurt by uncritical acceptance and thrives on critical examination.

If you're waiting to have good ideas before you have any ideas, you won't have many ideas.

The possibility that a void exists after death has motivated me to work hard so I can make a difference — so that my thoughts and ideas will not die. When I was working on my Ph.D., a coworker in our lab told me that the world's libraries contain our extra soma, or out-of-body genes. Ideas are passed on like genes, and I have a great urge to spread my ideas. I read an article in the newspaper about an official at the New York Public Library who said that the only place on earth where immortality is provided is in libraries. This is the collective memory of humanity. I put this on a sign and placed it over my desk. It helped me to persevere and get through my Ph.D. work. (p199)

Myths often do a lot of theoretical good, while they are still new.