About Ideas Quotes

Movies are all about plot. Theater, even if it's story heavy, it's about ideas. ~ Harvey Fierstein

Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography. That struggle is complex and interesting because it is not only about soldiers and cannons but also about ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings. ~ Edward W. Said

In a book you can really talk about ideas and themes and characters in a deeper way than you can even on the screen. ~ Noah Hawley

I think we should be worried about the fact that we have become, as a society, very focused on the way people look, the way they dress. I do think we should worry about that because we should be worried about content. We should be worried about ideas. We should not be putting form over function. ~ Christy Clark

Innovation, sales and marketing are less about ideas and persuasion and more about understanding. We forget that. People don't want one more nudge in the direction we have decided they need to go. They need us to build our businesses around what we notice will make their lives better. WHERE ~ Bernadette Jiwa

Fact is, the first 100 years of our country's history were about who could build the biggest, most efficient farm. And the second century focused on the race to build factories. Welcome to the third century, folks. The third century is about ideas. ~ Seth Godin

My 'work' is about seeing not about ideas. ~ Elliott Erwitt

The main question in drama, the way I was taught, is always, 'What does the protagonist want?' That's what drama is. It comes down to that. It's not about theme, it's not about ideas, it's not about setting, but what the protagonist wants. ~ David Mamet

I do not believe that politics in the long run is about individuals. It is about ideas. ~ Eliot Spitzer

For original ideas to come about, you have to let them percolate under the level of consciousness in a place where we have no way to make them obey our own desires or our own direction. Their random combinations are driven by forces we don't know about. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Mr. Bush has squandered the hard-built paternity of 40 years. But so has the party, and so have its leaders. If they had pushed away for serious reasons, they could have separated the party's fortunes from the president's. This would have left a painfully broken party, but they wouldn't be left with a ruined brand,- as they all say, speaking the language of marketing. And they speak that language because they are marketers, not thinkers. Not serious about policy. Not serious about ideas. And not serious about leadership, only followership. ~ Peggy Noonan

It seems almost backwards to me that my music seems the more emotional outlet, and the art stuff seems more about ideas. ~ David Byrne

I love silence. And one of the paradoxes about the way I live and also about my work is that definitely one of the reasons I went into music, and especially into composing is that I love setting up an environment where I can be by myself for long periods of time and have everything as quiet as possible, either to think about sound, or to think about ideas, or just to focus on things that are important to me. ~ Tod Machover

What's hard, in hacking as in fiction, is not writing, it's deciding what to write. ~ Neal Stephenson

The phone rang. It was a familiar voice.

It was Alan Greenspan. Paul O'Neill had tried to stay in touch with people who had served under Gerald Ford, and he'd been reasonably conscientious about it. Alan Greenspan was the exception. In his case, the effort was constant and purposeful. When Greenspan was the chairman of Ford's Council of Economic Advisers, and O'Neill was number two at OMB, they had become a kind of team. Never social so much. They never talked about families or outside interests. It was all about ideas: Medicare financing or block grants - a concept that O'Neill basically invented to balance federal power and local autonomy - or what was really happening in the economy. It became clear that they thought well together. President Ford used to have them talk about various issues while he listened. After a while, each knew how the other's mind worked, the way married couples do.

In the past fifteen years, they'd made a point of meeting every few months. It could be in New York, or Washington, or Pittsburgh. They talked about everything, just as always. Greenspan, O'Neill told a friend, "doesn't have many people who don't want something from him, who will talk straight to him. So that's what we do together - straight talk."

O'Neill felt some straight talk coming in.

"Paul, I'll be blunt. We really need you down here," Greenspan said. "There is a real chance to make lasting changes. We could be a team at the key moment, t ~ Ron Suskind

I like feeling at home and knowing people. I like talking about ideas and being friendly. ~ Billy Childish

In our young days, when Modigliani and I first came to Paris, in 1906, nobody was very clear about ideas. But unconsciously, we knew quite a lot of things, of which we became aware later on. ~ Gino Severini

Stories are not about ideas, gimmicks, or places. Stories are about people. People are about feelings! ~ Barry B. Longyear

Strong minds talk about ideas; weak minds talk about people. ~ Sean Covey

I've always talked a lot on stage - I really wanted to communicate my ideas and when you're playing at a lot of shitty punk clubs they don't have good PAs and so no one knows what you're singing about. ~ Kathleen Hanna

Problem with the big philosophers is they cared about ideas more than people. Hegel would probably have stepped over a guy trying to slit his wrists outside a bar - to get to all the people he could sit and bullshit with inside. Did you know half of philosophy was first put into words by people shot in the ass? ~ Carol Plum-Ucci

Great minds talk about ideas; small minds talk about people ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Little minds think and talk about people.
Average minds think and talk about things and actions.
Great minds think and talk about ideas. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Most people don't have any idea about all the complicated life going on inside a hive. Bees have a secret life we don't know anything about. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Basically, fiction is people. You can't write fiction about ideas. ~ Theodore Sturgeon

I'm a novelist, so I can't write about ideas unless they're attached to people. ~ Julian Barnes

Visualization prepares you for the experience of success. As you become increasingly optimistic and excited about ideas that motivate you, you open yourself to new ideas, meaningful relationships, and exhilarating opportunities. ~ Julie Connor

I spent more than ten years working on the Neues Museum. It was a wonderful experience, an example of real collaboration between architects, conservationists, curators, client, politicians, the media, and the public. Discussions, even when difficult, were always about ideas. Ideas matter to Germans. They're a reflective people. That's attractive. ~ David Chipperfield

If I hadn't spent a big chunk of time in academia I might not have the depth of consciousness I do about ideas like that. I might think, for instance, that Freud was no big deal in terms of the shape of social organization then or now. I might think that the discourses of politics and law are real and stable and fair. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

Stop worrying about your identity and concern yourself with the people you care about, ideas that matter to you, beliefs you can stand by, tickets you can run on. Intelligent humans make those choices with their brain and hearts and they make them alone. The world does not deliver meaning to you. You have to make it meaningful...and decide what you want and need and must do. It's a tough, unimaginably lonely and complicated way to be in the world. But that's the deal: you have to live; you can't live by slogans, dead ideas, clichés, or national flags. Finding an identity is easy. It's the easy way out. ~ Zadie Smith

What you want to do is talk about ideas, you write a novel, you have a lecture about those ideas. Satire and comedy are really the only film mediums where you can get into ideas and have people leave the theater without being moralized. ~ Justin Simien

They(students) accept the shift in the locus of representation but resist shifting ways they think about ideas. That is threatening. That's why the critique of multiculturalism seeks to shut the classroom down again - to halt this revolution in how we know what we know. It's as though many people know that the focus on difference has the potential to revolutionize the classroom and they do not want the revolution to take place. ~ Bell Hooks

The ideas aren't that important. Really they aren't. Everyone's got an idea for a book, a movie, a story, a TV series. ~ Neil Gaiman

Ideas are cheap. Always be passionate about ideas and communicating those ideas and discoveries to others in the things you make. ~ Charles Eames

Ideas matter in New York. I am certain that more conversations in New York are about ideas than anywhere else. Not just vague theories, but ideas that New Yorkers have the will, and the clout, to do something about. ~ David Frost

In order to create something new, to invent a new product or idea, you need to anticipate where things are headed. That requires a mixture of certain habits of mind. You need to foster imagination, thoroughly understand the origins of past ideas, learn from others' mistakes, talk to lots of people about ideas and test your hypotheses against people both alive and dead. ~ Joshua Rogers

I've managed to dodge the curse. Not all my family have. Of course, music helped me - music is all about civilization, about something worthwhile. It's all about ideas. ~ Gordon Getty

It's not about ideas. It's about making ideas happen. ~ Scott Belsky

Music can be appreciated from several points of view: the listener, the performer, the composer. In mathematics there is nothing analogous to the listener; and even if there were, it would be the composer, rather than the performer, that would interest him. It is the creation of new mathematics, rather than its mundane practice, that is interesting. Mathematics is not about symbols and calculations. These are just tools of the tradequavers and crotchets and five-finger exercises. Mathematics is about ideas. In particular it is about the way that different ideas relate to each other. If certain information is known, what else must necessarily follow? The aim of mathematics is to understand such questions by stripping away the inessentials and penetrating to the core of the problem. It is not just a question of getting the right answer; more a matter of understanding why an answer is possible at all, and why it takes the form that it does. Good mathematics has an air of economy and an element of surprise. But, above all, it has significance. ~ Ian Stewart

Superior people talk about ideas. Mediocre people talk about things. Little people talk about other people. ~ John Whitfield

All of my work has been about ideas of utopia and dystopia. I think that's what gives America interest. It's many things all at once. It's such a complicated society. ~ Joel Sternfeld

We have so much to cover and so little time to cover it. Howard Gardner refers to curriculum coverage as the single greatest enemy of understanding. Think instead about ideas to be discovered. ~ Alfie Kohn

People don't care about books. They care about ideas. ~ Tim O'Reilly

The pathbreaker who disdains the applause he may get from the crowd of his contemporaries does not depend on his own age's ideas. He is free to say with Schillers Marquis Posa: "This century is not ripe for my ideas; I live as a citizen of centuries to come." The genius' work too is embedded in the sequence of historical events, is conditioned by the achievements of preceding generations, and is merely a chapter in the evolution of ideas. But it adds something new and unheard of to the treasure of thoughts and may in this sense be called creative. The genuine history of mankind is the history of ideas. It is ideas that distinguish man from ali other beings. Ideas engender social institutions, political changes, technological methods of production, and ali that is called economic conditions. And in searching for their origin we inevitably come to a point at which ali that can be asserted is that a man had an idea. Whether the name of this man is known or not is of secondary importance.
This is the meaning that history attaches to the notion of individuality. Ideas are the ultimate given of historical inquiry. Ali that can be said about ideas is that they carne to pass. The historian may point out how a new idea fitted into the ideas developed by earlier generations and how it may be considered a continuation of these ideas and their logical sequei. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

I did this movie, Predestination, and it's one of my favorite movies I've ever made, because sci-fi really lets you talk about ideas in a way that's not pretentious. ~ Ethan Hawke

I mean, by such flightiness, something that feels unsatisfied at the center of my life - that makes me shaky, fickle, inquisitive, and hungry. I could call it a longing for home and not be far wrong. Or I could call it a longing for whatever supersedes, if it cannot pass through, understanding. Other words that come to mind: faith, grace, rest. In my outward appearance and life habits I hardly change - there's never been a day that my friends haven't been able to say, and at a distance, "There's Oliver, still standing around in the weeds. There she is, still scribbling in her notebook." But, at the center: I am shaking; I am flashing like tinsel. Restless. I read about ideas. Yet I let them remain ideas. I read about the poet who threw his books away, the better to come to a spiritual completion. Yet I keep my books. I flutter; I am attentive, maybe I even rise a little, balancing; then I fall back. ~ Mary Oliver

I have very intense conversations with friends, people I really interconnect with. We talk about politics, important things. I like to talk about ideas and get people to be specific. ~ Jacqueline Bisset

Philosophy wasn't about facts, it was about ideas. My first essay title was something like: 'How can you know what other people are thinking?' I thought, 'Wow, what an amazing thing.' I really thought deeply for the first time. ~ Sophie Kinsella

What is education for? And more specifically, what is at stake in a distinctly Christian education? What does the qualifier Christian mean when appended to education? It is usually understood that education is about ideas and information (though it is also too often routinely reduced to credentialing for a career and viewed as a ticket to a job). And so distinctively Christian education is understood to be about Christian ideas--which usually requires a defense of the importance of "the life of the mind." On this account, the goal of a Christian education is the development of a Christian perspective, or more commonly now, a Christian worldview, which is taken to be a system of Christian beliefs, ideas, and doctrines.

But what if this line of thinking gets off on the wrong foot? What if education ... is not primarily about the absorption of ideas and information, but about the formation of hearts and desires? What if we began by appreciating how education not only gets into our head but also (and more fundamentally) grabs us by the gut? What if education was primarily concerned with shaping our hopes and passions - our visions of 'the good life' - and not merely about the dissemination of data and information as inputs to our thinking? What if the primary work of education was the transforming of our imagination rather than the saturation of our intellect? ...

What if education wasn't first and foremost about what we know, but about what we love? ~ James K.A. Smith

Poor minds talk about people average minds talk about events great minds talk about ideas ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

I am through generalizing about ideas apart from men who generate them. I am through writing books about the dead, or writing books about the living to the unborn (tucked away as Literature) or writing books about the unborn to the living (whiffed away as prophecy). I put up my life on advertising the living to the living, on making men of genius known to the people and interpreted to their time, that the time in which I live, may live face to face with its men of vision and that they may live face to face with one another. ~ Gerald Stanley Lee

The Sentimentalist, roughly speaking, is the man who wants to eat his cake and have it. He has no sense of honor about ideas; he will not see that one must pay for an idea as well as for anything else. He will have them all at once in one wild intellectual harem, no matter how much they quarrel and contradict each other. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Writing is not about ideas, it is about the expression of ideas - a written expression. ~ Paul Raymond Martin

Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas. ~ Marie Curie

Let me tell you something: you can not write good fiction about ideas. You can only write good fiction about people. ~ Theodore Sturgeon

As a musician or a performer, you're meant to know what you're about, but it's ridiculous that someone 14 would have any idea of what they're about. ~ Ben Lee

Don't write about ideas ... write about convictions of the heart. ~ Leonard Cohen

Not too long ago, I was speaking at Princeton, and some of the students asked me how they were to choose which issue of social justice is the most important. The question made me cringe. Issues? These issues have faces. We're talking not only about ideas but also about human emergencies. My response to the well-intentioned Princeton students was, Don't choose issues; choose people. Come play in the fire hydrants in North Philly. Fall in love with a group of people who are marginalized and suffering, and then you won't have to worry about which cause you need to protest. Then the issues will choose you. ~ Shane Claiborne

Faith is what? Faith is to love something you have no idea about. ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

When I came up to Cambridge (in October 1921) to read economics, I did not have much idea of what it was about. ~ Joan Robinson

I have friends who are science journalists, and I'm seeing stories of theirs or talking with them about ideas that they're pitching. Certain kinds of science are around me all the time, like climate change and biology. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

Talking about ideas for a novel is a bit like showing pictures of the ultrasound if you're pregnant. Until they're out in the world, they can only be wonderful to you. ~ Clare Boylan

Finn said art isn't about drawing or painting a perfect bowl of fruit. It's about ideas. And you, he said, have enough good ideas to last a lifetime. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

What I'm trying to do is make music that people relate to, that talks about ideas that are personal but also make that connection to trying to make revolutionary change, and I don't need to change my music to get to a certain audience. ~ Boots Riley

I think the equipment you use has a real, visible influence on the character of your photography. You're going to work differently, and make different kinds of pictures, if you have to set up a view camera on a tripod than if you're Lee Friedlander with handheld 35 mm rangefinder. But fundamentally, vision is not about which camera or how many megapixels you have, it's about what you find important. It's all about ideas. ~ Keith Carter

Maybe philosophy - I love talking about ideas. Or maybe art history. I was thinking about psychology, then I got really afraid because everybody says it's terribly boring. ~ Claire Danes

The idea of massive amounts of fame-having my face on Walgreens end-caps and pizza boxes-I don't fantasize about that. I'm happy with just being a songwriter. I'd rather have smaller numbers [of fans] that are really into what I'm doing than a massive amount of people that don't really know what I'm about. ~ Kacey Musgraves

Music and art is about ideas, I think. Especially music. You have the freedom to work with your ideas and your dreams and your fantasies, which is quite hard to do in many other places. ~ Karin Dreijer Andersson

I'm like a point guard. Barack is about ideas and questions, and I don't have all the answers. He trusts me to pass the ball to others to give him points of view. ~ Mark Lippert

I feel that all knowledge should be in the free-trade zone. Your knowledge, my knowledge, everybody's knowledge should be made use of. I think people who refuse to use other people's knowledge are making a big mistake. Those who refuse to share their knowledge with other people are making a great mistake, because we need it all. I don't have any problem about ideas I got from other people. If I find them useful, I'll just ease them right in and make them my own. ~ Myles Horton

Neophyte writers tend to believe that there is something magical about ideas and that if they can just get a hold of a good one, then their futures are ensured. ~ Lynn Abbey

Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence. ~ Greg Smith

Film is very much about sitting around and talking about ideas, and that's the stuff that I love, but I haven't experienced that yet in the television that I've done so far. It makes me long for movies again because, creatively, I always have a much more fulfilling experience there. ~ Mike Vogel

What I really think about Banksy is I think he's a genius; he's a great artist, and I like his stuff. But he's got to accept it if, from time to time, someone will need to paint over his work. ~ Boris Johnson

...about a spiritual path, seeing the validity in all paths, and knowing that religion can help or hamper the path. The teachings in every religion are valuable. It is humanity that has bogged down in dogma and rules. Loving and practicing the teachings that ring true is the key. ~ Lynne Cockrum-Murphy

A pipe is greater than a bong. Because when you're smoking a pipe at least it makes you look like you're thinking about something. ~ Demetri Martin

Anytime you have difficulty making an important decision, you can be sure that it's the result of being unclear about your values. ~ Anthony Robbins

Most people find the word Apocalypse, to be a terrifying concept. Checked in the dictionary, it means only revelation, although it obviously has also come to mean end of the world. As to what the end of the world means, I would say that probably depends on what we mean by world. I don't think this means the planet, or even the life forms upon the planet. I think the world is purely a construction of ideas, and not just the physical structures, but the mental structures, the ideologies that we've erected, that is what I would call the world. Our political structures, philosophical structures, ideological frameworks, economies. These are actually imaginary things, and yet that is the framework that we have built our entire world upon. It strikes me that a strong enough wave of information could completely overturn and destroy all of that. A sudden realization that would change our entire perspective upon who we are and how we exist. ~ Alan Moore

Ideas in a void have never appealed to me; action must follow thought or political life is meaningless. ~ Oswald Mosley

Sexually-transmitted diseases is caused by sexual activity and promiscuity it spreads diseases. That's been known, you know, about 400 or 500 years, that somehow these diseases are spread. If fault comes with people because of their personal behavior but it isn't to be placed on a burden on other people, innocent people, why should they have to pay for the consequences? ~ Ron Paul

For the first time in years the tears were streaming down his face. But they were for himself now. He did not care about mouth and eyes and moving hands. He wanted to care, and he could not care. For he had gone away and he could never go back any more. The gates were closed, the sun was gone down, and there was no beauty but the gray beauty of steel that withstands all time. Even the grief he could have borne was left behind in the country of illusion, of youth, of the richness of life, where his winter dreams had flourished.
"Long ago," he said, "long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

She didn't want to talk about his nonsensical fairy stuff. "That's because you can't take me there. You're not capable of it. Because it doesn't exist. ~ Terry Spear

I never got many questions about my managing. I tried to get twenty-five guys who didn't ask questions. ~ Earl Weaver

But Emma's just as naïve as Rachel. They both maintain that the more you know about humans, the more you'll like them. It's at least partly why Rachel's encouraging him to go back to school, even if she hides it behind the other good reason he should attend-to keep some adolescent human male from getting himself killed. Just the thought of Emma walking the halls without him makes him ball his fists.
"You're right," he says with finality. "I need to stay in school." He peels off his shirt and tosses it over a chair. "Tell Emma I'm waiting for her. ~ Anna Banks

Resilience is all about being able to overcome the unexpected. Sustainability is about survival. The goal of resilience is to thrive. ~ Jamais Cascio

Hey, I'm for love, not war. How about we have a beer? ~ Mel Gibson

I'll tell you, I've never particularly been a 'Trek' person. I feel about 'Trek' the way one feels about known, vaguely liked, but rather distant members of one's family. ~ China Mieville

What's interesting about the Taliban, is they're more afraid of educating girls than they are of drones. One educated girl is more scary to the Taliban than a drone. ~ Tina Brown

I've always said as a political scientist that "culture" is what we use when we can't explain things. I think it's more about accessibility. Part of the problem is that this is an expensive game [golf]. I know in a couple of places where there are black members, and they come from pretty much the same socioeconomic level that the white members come from. ~ Condoleezza Rice

Here is the truth about self-discovery: it is never without cost. ~ Angela Flournoy

This isn't just a war over land, it's a war about God. And Alfred ... is Christ's servant ... ~ Bernard Cornwell

Most of my important lessons about life have come from recognizing how others from a different culture view things. ~ Edgar H Schein

I wasn't built for this," he yelled. "Look at me. You know it's true." And for the
first time, maybe ever, he didn't sound cool. He sounded a little panicked. And a
little angry. "I don't want to love someone so much that they take up all my head,
all my space. If I knew I was going to feel this way about you, I would have left a
long time ago, while I still could. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and every where, could produce no variety of things. All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being, necessarily existing. ~ Isaac Newton

Asked about our sense that we are not safe in our own world, Albert Einstein once said, The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it. ~ Martha Stout

Kid A is about an abortion. *laughs* It's about how our music is an abortion ~ Thom Yorke

meander, v.

"...because when it all comes down to it, there's no such thing as a two-hit wonder. So it's better just to have that one song that everyone knows, instead of diluting it with a follow-up that only half succeeds. I mean, who really cares what Soft Cell's next single was, as long as we have 'Tainted Love'?"
I stop. You're still listening.
"Wait," I say. "What was I talking about? How did we get to 'Tainted Love'?"
"Let's see," you say, "I believe we started roughly at the Democratic gains in the South, then jumped back to the election of 1948, dipping briefly into northern constructions of the South, vis-a-vis Steel Magnolias, Birth of a Nation, Johnny Cash, and Fried Green Tomatoes. Which landed you on To Kill a Mockingbird, and how it is both Southern and universal, which -- correct me if I'm wrong -- got us to Harper Lee and her lack of a follow-up novel, intersected with the theory, probably wrong, that Truman Capote wrote the novel, then hopping over to literary one-hit wonders, and using musical one-hit wonders to make a point about their special place in our culture. I think."
"Thank you," I say. "That's wonderful. ~ David Levithan

I hate all the worry about what someone else is feeling, this crippling insecurity, this tightness in my chest. ~ Danila Botha

Family is the chief metaphor that the Bible uses when it talks about the church. God is our Father. Jesus is our Husband. The Spirit is the Counselor to a redeemed, beloved, and often dysfunctional spiritual family. We are spiritual brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and daughters and sons to one another. We didn't choose one another, but we have been given to one another by our Father in heaven, who intends for us to stay together and not hit the eject button when things get difficult or irritating or boring. And when we stay together, we are the better for it. ~ Scott Sauls

My first policy move would be to try to get a conversation going in the US about what people stand for and what we really want. Do we want to keep adding people to the world and to our country until we move to a battery-chicken kind of existence and then collapse? Or do we want to think hard about what really is valuable to us, and figure out how many people we can supply that to sustainably? ~ Paul R. Ehrlich