Old Ideas Quotes

He philosophy of Islam will be shown in terms of the modern philosophy, and if there are imperfections in the old ideas then they shall be removed. My task is merely constructive, and in this construction I shall take into consideration the best traditions of Islamic philosophy. ~ Muhammad Iqbal

The necessity for struggle is one of the clever devices through which nature forces individuals to expand, develop, progress, and become strong through resistance ... We are forced to recognize that this great universal necessity for struggle must have a definite and useful purpose. That purpose is to force the individual to sharpen his wits, arouse his enthusiasm, build up his spirit of faith, gain definiteness of purpose, develop his power of will, and inspire his faculty of imagination to give him new uses for old ideas and concepts ... ~ Napoleon Hill

We have such a great depth of human history in all of the arts, whether it's opera or mathematics or painting or classical music or jazz. There's so many things to study, new books to read, and certainly always ways to transform old ideas and to come up with new ones. ~ Patti Smith

Those inventors looked to their own lives as the raw materials for innovation. What's notable is that, in each case, they were often in an emotional state. We're more likely to recognize discoveries hidden in our own experiences when necessity pushes us, when panic or frustrations cause us to throw old ideas into new settings. Psychologists call this "creative desperation." Not all creativity relies on panic, of course. ~ Charles Duhigg

And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. ~ Toni Morrison

No original thought still exists. People are original, each one of them. The same ideas that others had before you are waiting for you to bring them back to life in a new way. The part of who you are that is left behind within these old ideas is what makes them original all over again. ~ Ashly Lorenzana

Letting go of that will likely spin you inward on a journey examining your old ideas about yourself, where they have come from and where you want to go from here. But that journey - that is one worth having. Because unlike the tales of the joys at the end of the pursuit of perfection, there is peace there. It is within you to find it. ~ Erin Brown

We have a natural tendency to romanticize breakthrough innovations, imagining momentous ideas transcending their surroundings, a gifted mind somehow seeing over the detritus of old ideas and ossified tradition. But ideas are works of bricolage; they're built out of that detritus. ~ Steven Johnson

It's not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas. ~ Edwin Land

White America looks at the Vietnamese, the Irish, the Jews, and they say, 'What's the problem with the blacks?' The resentment you hear around this town is based on that, not on old ideas of superiority. ~ Greg Iles

We have a powerful potential in out youth, and we must have the courage to change old ideas and practices so that we may direct their power toward good ends. ~ Mary McLeod Bethune

Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings. ~ Steven Johnson

When will we collectively see together that the history of the world played no role in preventing negative events similar to those of the past from ever happening again in this lifetime? Everything just keeps senselessly repeating itself. That is because, as humans, we forget too quickly. Our forgetfulness is our species' greatest fault. Our negligence to tap into accessible existing knowledge to prevent new disasters from recurring is unforgiving. We are too arrogant, too proud and too lazy to adapt old ideas that may have worked, let alone invent some new ones. Yet most importantly, the greatest obstacle to our evolution is that WE ARE TOO DIVIDED. ~ Suzy Kassem

If you do not fling old ideas out of your mind, you cannot give birth to new ones. ~ Peter Deunov

Who does ever get what they want? It doesn't seem to happen to many of us if any at all. It's always two people bumping against each other blindly, acting out old ideas and dreams and mistaken understandings. ~ Kent Haruf

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

Rather than proposing a forward-looking energy initiative, House Republicans continue to push Big Oil's tired old ideas, ideas that will do absolutely nothing to lower gas prices for the American consumer. ~ Jan Schakowsky

A great thinker does not necessarily have to discover a master idea but has to rediscover and to affirm a true but forgotten, ignored or misunderstood master idea and interpret it in all the diverse aspects of thought not previously done, in a powerful and consistent way, despite surrounding ignorance and opposition. This criterion we think would include all prophets and their true followers among the Muslim scholars. He is both a great and original thinker who brings new meanings and interpretations to old ideas, thereby providing both continuity and originality to the important intellectual and cultural problems of his time and through it, of mankind. Thus the brilliant interpretations of scholars and sages like al-Ghazali and Mulla Sadra then, and Iqbal and al-Attas now, deserve to be recognized and acknowledged as manifesting certain qualities of greatness and originality. ~ Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud

The old idea is that when tragedy strikes or when an obstacle blocks us, there are only two possibilities. We either become a smaller person or we become a bigger person. If it's a real life change you cannot come out the same. So therefore, you're either going to come out smaller or you're going to rise up and ultimately come out of it a bigger person. ~ Michael Meade

Land began to be seen as something to be owned privately and exploited for private interests, and never was entirely reconciled with the old ideas that land should be utilized in common for the good of all. ~ Neil Abercrombie

Sometimes I find bringing in my old ideas is just detrimental. ~ Bear McCreary

The best thing you can do to come up with a lot of new ideas is to learn a lot of old ideas. Because new ideas are just connections between old ideas, the more ideas you have in your head, the more connections you'll be able to create between them. ~ Yevgeniy Brikman

If you always read the same old ideas, what progress can you make in the name of discovering new paths? ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Creativity is fragile; if you don't nurture it, it can die, leaving you recycling old ideas and pretending they're fresh. It's a sure road to mediocrity. ~ Lee Silber

A new breeze is blowing, and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn; for in man's heart, if not in fact, the day of the dictator is over. The totalitarian era is passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient, lifeless tree. ~ George H. W. Bush

The trick is learning to frame your new ideas as tweaks of old ideas, to mix a little fluency with a little disfluency - to make your audience see the familiarity behind the surprise. ~ Derek Thompson

I just don't see this old idea of the Red peril, itching to take over the world. I think you can explain a lot of the Soviets' moves as stemming from a basic sense of insecurity. ~ John Anderson

New ideas should confront old ideas. We must refer to the example of Europe. People have fought to make Europe what it is today. Freedom is not something that is served up on a plate. ~ Tahar Ben Jelloun

Sustainability is now a big baggy sack in which people throw all kinds of old ideas, hot air and dodgy activities in order to be able to greenwash their products and feel good. ~ Kevin McCloud

If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old ~ Peter F. Drucker

It's not the number of years that makes you old, but the idea that you are getting old. ~ Emile Coue

I just have a sense that, you know, I'm curious about what is religion about, you know? Why do some of us still engage it? It's not because it's a set of old beliefs or old ideas. Or even, particularly, the view that this is the only true religion. Many of us no longer accept those views. ~ Elaine Pagels

Old ideas give way slowly; for they are more than abstract logical forms and categories. They are habits, predispositions, deeply ingrained attitudes of aversion and preference. ~ John Dewey

Ideas and thoughts are like genes ... more you keep inside yourself more it multply with same species consuming your whole energy to breed to produce same old ideas and thoughts again and again until it kills you. So, let it be interact with other species..take it out ... make reaction with other peoples's thoughts and ideas and produce something new ... produce new energy..new thoughts..new perceptions ... ~ Jagdish Poudel

Romance is different when two people approach each other from the space of knowledge rather than absolute mystery. No matter how well we get to know someone else, there is always a realm of mystery. Old ideas about romantic love taught females and males to believe that erotic tension depended on the absence of communication and understanding. This misinformation about the nature of love has helped to further the politics of domination, particularly male domination of women. Without knowing one other, we can never experience intimacy. ~ Bell Hooks

We must constantly encourage ourselves and each other to attempt the heretical actions that our dreams imply and so many of our old ideas disparage. ~ Audre Lorde

When authors write best, or at least, when they write most fluently, an influence seems to waken in them which becomes their master, which will have its own way, putting out of view all behests but its own, dictating certain words, and insisting on their being used, whether vehement or measured in their nature; new moulding characters, giving unthought-of turns to incidents, rejecting carefully elaborated old ideas, and suddenly creating and adopting new ones. Is it not so? And should we try to counteract this influence? Can we indeed counteract it?
from a letter to G.H. Lewes, 12 January 1848 ~ Charlotte Bronte

The greatest difficulty in the world is not for people to accept new ideas, but to make them forget old ideas. ~ Tom Peters

When people speak of ideas that revolutionize society, they do but express the fact that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence. ~ Karl Marx

Modern formulations are necessary even in defense of very ancient truths. Not because of any alleged anachronism in the old ideas – the Beatitudes remain the essential statements of the Western code – but because the idiom of life is always changing ~ William F. Buckley Jr.

Why shouldn't rap be esoteric, able to take in current events, history and criticism? I guess it's this old idea of containment - that rappers, because they're black, can't and shouldn't aspire to look outside the ghetto for influence. ~ Saul Williams

It is a good idea to obey all the rules when you're young just so you'll have the strength to break them when you're old. ~ Mark Twain

Groupthink can become a serious issue - old ideas stay around after they're useful, and new ideas too often don't get a fair hearing. ~ Elizabeth Warren

Old ideas from an old man about an old vision of Europe. ~ Denis MacShane

It is not difficult to learn a new idea, but it is almost impossible to unlearn an old one. ~ Debasish Mridha

We should be empty of clutching, empty of self, empty of all the old ideas of substance. We should be 'lost in the objectivity of world-love', as I have elsewhere put it; or, perhaps better, we should let ourselves be only an empty space filled with brightness. Life lived like that is 'eternal' life. ~ Don Cupitt

Old ideas of not trading because 'they won't open their markets to us' miss the entire point of allowing goods to be imported into the United States - because we want and need them and because someone here believes that the good or service received in exchange for our dollars creates value for them. ~ Mike Pompeo

Do you think you can can change anything?'
'Of course not. We're waiting.'
'For what?'
'Until the world changes on its own. That is the one truth of history. Everything ends. Civilisations, empires, however powerful and strong. They all end, sooner or later. When it does we will be there, with all the old ideas and thoughts, preserved and ready to blossom. We're not subversives. We do nothing to bring it about, although some are more impatient. Unfortunately the authorities do not bother to make the distinction. For someone like Oldmanter, merely believing society will collapse is a crime in itself. ~ Arcadia - Ian Pears

The capacity for people to kid themselves is huge. Living on illusions or delusions, and the re-establishing of these illusions or delusions requires a big effort to keep them from being seen through. But a very old idea is at work behind our current state of affairs: enantiodromia, or the Greek notion of things turning into their opposite. ~ James Hillman

A genuine invention in the realm of ideas must first emerge as an abstruse and even partial concept? At first blusha new idea appearstobe verycloseto insanity because to be new it must reverse important basic beliefs and assumptions which, in turn, have been institutionalized and are administered by one or another kind of priesthood with a vested interest in an old idea. ~ Arthur Miller

AN ARTIST'S PRAYER
O Great Creator,
We are gathered together in your name
That we may be of greater service to you
And to our fellows.
We offer ourselves to you as instruments.
We open ourselves to your creativity in our lives.
We surrender to you our old ideas.
We welcome your new and more expansive ideas.
We trust that you will lead us.
We trust that it is safe to follow you.
We know you created us and that creativity
Is your nature and our own.
We ask you to unfold our lives
According to your plan, not our low self-worth.
Help us to believe that it is not too late
And that we are not too small or too flawed
To be healed -
By you and through each other - and made whole.
Help us to love one another,
To nurture each other's unfolding,
To encourage each other's growth,
And understand each other's fears.
Help us to know that we are not alone,
That we are loved and lovable.
Help us to create as an act of worship to you. ~ Julia Cameron

The nations of Israel and of the world are all broken, like pieces of shattered glass. It is time for all of us to come together and start anew, not with old ideas about buildings that need to be erected and divisions that need to be marked, but with the new idea of restoring ourselves into unity with God and with one another. ~ Perri Birney

I wanted, I told her, to lie under the stars and smell different breezes. I wanted to drink different waters, feel different heats. Stand with my comrades atop the ruin of old ideas. Plant my boot and steel my eye and not run.
I said all this to my dead mother, spoke it down through the dirt: there was a conflagration to come; I wanted to lend it my spark. ~ Laird Hunt

This is why it might be more useful to understand the proliferation of interactive media as an opportunity for renaissance: a moment when we have the ability to step out of the story altogether. Renaissances are historical instances of widespread recontextualisation. People in a variety of different arts, philosophies and sciences have the ability to reframe their reality. Renaissance literally means 'rebirth'. It is the rebirth of old ideas in a new context. ~ Douglas Rushkoff

The agricultural co-operative movement has been a severe ideological and political struggle from the very beginning. No cooperative can be established without going through such a struggle. Before a brand-new social system can be built on the site of the old, the site must be swept clean. Invariably, remnants of old ideas reflecting the old system remain in people's minds for a long time, and they do not easily give way. After a co-operative is established, it must go through many more struggles before it can be consolidated. Even then, the moment it relaxes its efforts it may collapse. ~ Mao Zedong

Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own. ~ Sydney J. Harris

I believe in magic. I believe our destiny is not carved in stone and that one thought is the seed to a new life or a different path.
I believe in the power of the cards to illuminate what you already know and to awaken the wisdom inside of you.
I believe how we think and experience life matters and I believe in the power of the cards to shift our thoughts and therefore create more positive experiences.
I believe in the magic of the cards to inspire us to let go of old ideas and restrictions. ~ Tonya Sheridan

Old ideas are continually being slain by new facts. There is nothing stable in the conclusions of the mind, and it is impossible that there ever should be unless we hold that the universe is made to the measure of the human mind, an assumption for which nothing in the past gives any warrant. ~ Edith Hamilton

It's the old idea that the process of evolution is some push in the direction of greater complexity
in particular greater intellectual complexity. In one twig of the tree of life, namely ours, having a big brain happened to have advantages. But that's just what worked for a particular species of primate 5 to 7 million years ago. ~ Steven Pinker

I never think of an entire book at once. I always just start with a very small idea. In 'Holes,' I just began with the setting; a juvenile correctional facility located in the Texas desert. Then I slowly make up the story, and rewrite it several times, and each time I rewrite it, I get new ideas, and change the old ideas around. ~ Louis Sachar

Back at my teaching and editing jobs I imagined the new world we were trying to create would be enduring and absolutely better than any world we had inherited. For me, if an idea was purported to be new, it looked a lot better than any idea that seemed to be old. Most theologians I knew were trying to discover some new way of looking at the old ideas of God, humanity, sin and salvation. I was there to teach theology, but theology itself was in search of legitimation. What I was really doing might more accurately be described as promoting Rogerian psychology, wealth-distribution, demytholgy and existentialist ethics than studying God. Theology was desperately in search of a method, whether it was borrowed form cutting-edge philosophy, social theory or political life, as long as it didn't begin with revelation. ~ Thomas C. Oden

Although the view that, once discovered, ideas can be imitated for free by anybody is pervasive, it is far from the truth. While it may occasionally be the case that an idea is acquired at no cost - ideas are generally difficult to communicate, and the resources for doing so are limited. It is rather ironic that a group of economists, who are also college professors and earn a substantial living teaching old ideas because their transmission is neither simple nor cheap, would argue otherwise in their scientific work. Most of the times imitation requires effort and, what is more important, imitation requires purchasing either some products or some teaching services from the original innovator, meaning that most spillovers are priced. ~ Michele Boldrin

Those who have most at stake in the old culture, or are most rigid in their beliefs, try to summon people back to the old ideas.' ~ Marilyn Ferguson

Nishi's sister, who was sixteen years old, had gone for a "holiday" in Sylhet and returned six months later with a husband and a swelling belly. Nishi, strong on forward-planning skills, was taking evasive action: she was going on a holiday of her own and she would return when she was twenty-five. At that ancient age the danger of marriage was over. ~ Monica Ali

Every morning
before the birds start
trilling me their stories,
I give birth to a new love
through my same old heart
when a lake's placidity
finds life in the swans breath
Only for you...

From the poem 'Only For You ~ Munia Khan

The energy is still similar because I saw some old footage of us when we were in France that they'd dredged up out of God knows where and I was like, the energy is still there. ~ Anthony Kiedis

Mandelstam's style is not singular. He could be stately and traditional, ribald and funny, hectic, elegiac. He could handle abstractions and ideas as well as Pope or Browning but then be so musical that other poems approach pure sound. ~ Christian Wiman

Seeing Cubism paintings at the Beaubourg makes me very happy and also old films. ~ Yves Saint-Laurent

I cannot seriously believe in it [quantum theory] because the theory cannot be reconciled with the idea that physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance [spukhafte Fernwirkungen]. ~ Albert Einstein

Think bigger. Forget limits. Embrace the idea of endless possibility ... It will change you. ~ Marianne Williamson

In any age, there is no shortage of people willing to embark on a hazardous adventure. Columbus and Magellan filled eight ships between them for voyages into the void. One hundred and fifty years ago, the possibilities offered by missionary service were limitless and first-rate. Later, Scott and Shackleton turned away droves after filling their crews for their desperate Antarctic voyages. In 1959 ... sailor H.W. Tilman, looking for a crew for a voyage in an old wooden yacht to the Southern Ocean, ran this ad in the London Times: "Hand [man] wanted for long voyage in small boat. No pay, no prospects, not much pleasure." Tilman received more replies than he could investigate, one from as far away as Saigon. ~ Peter Nichols

God, we are told, is willing to render himself inconsistent and ridiculous, to confound the curiosity of those whom, we are at the same time informed, he desires to enlighten by his special grace. What must we think of a revelation which, far from teaching us any thing, is calculated to darken and puzzle the clearest ideas? ~ Baron D'Holbach

Pulled pork jokes never get old. ~ Joel Edgerton

The idea of American exceptionalism doesn't extend to Americans being exceptional. ~ Maureen Dowd

Do not covet your ideas. ~ Paul Arden

Old school Janet Jackson is always good. I usually go old school, it's very rare that I pick a song from nowadays. ~ Jenna Dewan

If I indulge myself and surrender to memory, I can still feel the knot of excitement that gripped me as I turned the corner into Rue Mimosas, looking for the house of Rene Magritte. It was August, 1965. I was 33 years old and about to meet the man whose profound and witty surrealist paintings had contradicted my assumptions about photography. ~ Duane Michals

It's really a drag to sit around when you're old, and think, 'Ah, gee, I never went to France.' Go to France. Life is very short; you've got to pack it all in there. ~ Grace Slick

My old manager of the Irish National Theatre said 'Don't worry about being a star, just worry about being a working actor. Just keep working.' I think that's really good advice. ~ Colm Meaney

Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by. ~ Austin Kleon

I really wanted to focus on my songwriting, or songwriting with other people. I wanted to go learn from other people who were really good at the classic, more traditional idea of songwriting. ~ Mikky Ekko

We soon reached a dam and had to make a decision.
We knew it was forbidden to cross a dam, in the same way that it was forbidden ever to use a footpath or forestry track. (Unless it was part of the dreaded morning battle PT.)
This was a simple rule on Selection to make sure that you got used to navigating properly and that the going underfoot was always hard, which it inevitably always was. (In fact I, still to this day, feel a bit guilty if I go hiking on a footpath--old habits die hard.) ~ Bear Grylls

I don't think the Bonzo Dog could have evolved in America, nor could the old Nice: because of their musical discipline. This is one thing that British groups do have, a sort of discipline. Sometimes it can get a bit soulless, but on the whole I think it's preferable to the American alternative. ~ Jon Lord

Artists ... do not need the applause or condemnation of the critics, the ideas of other artists, or the demands of the collectors. ~ Robert Genn

Behold the word: Destroy, destroy, destroy. Destroy within yourself; destroy what surrounds you. Make space for your soul and for all other souls.

Destroy all good and all evil. Their ruins are the same.

Destroy the old dwellings of man and old the dwellings of the soul; what is dead is a distorting mirror.

Destroy, for all creation comes from destruction.

And for higher benevolence you must annihilate lower benevolence. And thus new good appears saturated with evil. ~ Marcel Schwob

Distance yourself from negative people who try to lower your motivation and decrease your ambition. Create space for positive people to come into your life. Surround yourself with positive people who believe in your dreams, encourage your ideas, support your ambitions, and bring out the best in you. ~ Roy Bennett

Training the workforce of tomorrow with today's high schools is like trying to teach kids about today's computers on a 50-year-old mainframe. ~ Bill Gates

The Wall is hundreds of years old too; or over a hundred, at least. Like the sidewalks, it's red brick, and must once have been plain but handsome. Now the gates have sentries and there are ugly new floodlights mounted on metal posts above it, and barbed wire along the bottom and broken glass set in concrete along the top. No one goes through those gates willingly. The precautions are for those trying to get out, though to make it even as far as the Wall, from the inside, past the electronic alarm system, would be next to impossible. Beside the main gateway there are six more bodies hanging, by the necks, their hands tied in front of them, their heads in white bags tipped sideways onto their shoulders. There must have been a Men's Salvaging early this morning. I didn't hear the bells. Perhaps I've become used to them. We ~ Margaret Atwood

What shall I do for pretty girls Now my old bawd is dead? ~ William Butler Yeats

For a while, Mirabelle believes there will be a moment when he will cave in and let himself love her, but eventually she lets the idea go. She hits bottom. She dwells in the muck for several months, not depressed exactly, but involved in a mourning that at first she thinks is for Ray but soon realizes is for the loss of her old self. ~ Steve Martin

Try to imagine its good old days whenever you see a ruin and try to do the same whenever you see an old person! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

You have to follow the old rule for a while. In fact, once you master the old rule, you are then the master-and masters get to change things. ~ Peter McWilliams

Is it true, prince, that you once declared that "beauty would save the world"? Great Heaven! The prince says that beauty saves the world! And I declare that he only has such playful ideas because he's in love! Gentlemen, the prince is in love. I guessed it the moment he came in. Don't blush, prince; you make me sorry for you. What beauty saves the world? Colia told me that you are a zealous Christian; is it so? Colia says you call yourself a Christian.'

The prince regarded him attentively, but said nothing. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If I had not lived so long I wouldn't be so old! ~ Leon Estes

We don't just grow old. We become old when we stop growing. ~ Sue Ziang

Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper ~ Paul Erdos

In winter, the Icelanders told the tales of the brave men of old in their families, and so the tradition was handed on from father to son, the same stories told every winter, till all the particulars became well known. ~ Sabine Baring-Gould

I was 15 years old at university, studying economics and philosophy, and I saw a retrospective of Australian film. They were very raw. 'Picnic at Hanging Rock,' 'Gallipoli;' they were fantastic. ~ Deborah Kara Unger

James tells the crowd that the river is just a few yards from where we stand is all we ever need to believe in. One white woman asks how old James is and I tell her he's seven and she tells me that he's so smart for an Indian boy.
James hears this and tells the white woman that she's pretty smart for an old white woman. ~ Sherman Alexie

Good intentions might sound nice, but it's positive actions that matter. ~ Tim Fargo