Thoughtful Ideas Quotes

All thoughtful persons perceive that the ideas of the morality of sexual relations upheld by the religions and laws of the Western nations are in our time undergoing a radical transformation. ~ Ellen Key

Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the 'leaders' must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities. ~ Maya Angelou

Friendship is Divine; think anything, get everything. (10 Alone; Vikrmn) ~ Vikrmn

Stevenson had noble ideas
as did the young Franklin for that matter. But Stevenson felt that the way to implement them was to present himself as a thoughtful idealist and wait for the world to flock to him. He considered it below him, or wrong, to scramble out among the people and ask them what they wanted. Roosevelt grappled voters to him. Stevenson shied off from them. Some thought him too pure to desire power, though he showed ambition when it mattered. ~ Garry Wills

As comestibles nourish our bodies and ideas nourish our minds, so art nourishes our souls. ~ Alexandra York

Ill give you an idea of how Jewish Mel Brooks is: Thats a nose job. ~ Martin Short

Pilate deserves our sympathies, not because he was a good though tragically mistaken man, but because we are not much better. We may believe in Jesus, but we do not believe in his ideas, at least not his ideas about violence, truth, and justice.2 ~ Brian Zahnd

I eventually realized that direct experience is the most valuable experience I can have. Western man is so surrounded by ideas, so bombarded with opinions, concepts, and information structures of all sorts, that it becomes difficult to experience anything without the intervening filter of these structures. ~ Michael Crichton

If you focus on what people care about, you have ideas. And people are looking for solutions. ~ Rob Portman

My idea of government support was, you supply me with hospitals, schools and the environment to do well and that will do me fine. But do not poke your nose in my business. ~ Alan Sugar

Without computers, in the 17th century, we could classify the entire animal kingdom ... there was this idea of the speciation, right? And now, all a search engine is is essentially the mathematical speciation of ideas - and these things really derive from the way that language is used and the way words relate. ~ Joshua Cohen

You should be grateful for all new ideas, also for the lesser ones, also for the hazy ones, also for the supplementary ideas adding some precision to a hazy one, or attempting the correction of a less fortunate one. ~ George Polya

Lord Bacon said, "Writing makes an exact man." He spoke the truth. Writing produces exactitude by forcing you to set down ideas in logical relation to one another. Writing crystallizes your thoughts and makes your ideas specific. ~ John Haggai

Parents ought, through their own behavior and the values by which they live, to provide direction for their children. But they need to rid themselves of the idea that there are surefire methods which, when well applied, will produce certain predictable results. Whatever we do with and for our children ought to flow from our understanding of and our feelings for the particular situation and the relation we wish to exist between us and our child. ~ Bruno Bettelheim

Of course not," said Sturmhond. "Anything worth doing always starts as a bad idea. ~ Leigh Bardugo

As the mind learns to understand more complicated combinations of ideas, simpler formulae soon reduce their complexity; so truths that were discovered only by great effort, that could at first only be understood by men capable of profound thought, are soon developed and proved by methods that are not beyond the reach of common intelligence. The strength and the limits of man ~ Nicolas De Caritat, Marquis De Condorcet

I'm the founder of the McAfee Anti-Virus Software Company. Although I have had nothing to do with this company for over 15 years, I still get volumes of mail asking 'how do I uninstall this software'. I have no idea. ~ John McAfee

A Bookworm
A moth ate a word. To me that seemed
A curious happening when I heard of that wonder,
That a worm should swallow the word of a man,
A thief in the dark eat a thoughtful discourse
And the strong base it stood on. He stole, but he was not
A whit the wiser when the word had been swallowed. ~ Anonymous

Every day thousands of ideas are born, but few are ever successfully implemented. ~ Eraldo Banovac

To know our own self is bliss. To see themselves clearly, a person must plunge themselves into the world they inhabit. We enhance our personal perspective by acquiring knowledge of the world. The more one knows about living through vivid personal encounters in the world that they occupy, the more that a person will come to understand him or herself. Self-knowledge requires an honest accounting of a person's experiences, frank admission of their furtive desires, and gracious acceptance of reality without surrendering their willingness to work to improve oneself and comfort other people. By attaching images to their real life experiences and secret dreams, a person learns rightly about the world. By writing about what adversities they experienced, a person can consciously go about integrating new ideas into their way of living. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

A writer decides to follow some ideas and not others for reasons that aren't always clear to him. It's often a matter of intuition. ~ Don DeLillo

Not romantic," she disagreed. "To me it would be romantic if Antony properly fell on his sword and kicked the bucket and Cleopatra escaped and lived a lovely life sailing along the Nile without him and his big ideas ruining her kingdom. ~ Jack Gantos

The full implications of feminism will evolve over time, as we organize, experiment, think, analyze, and revise our ideas and strategies in light of our experiences. No theory emerges in full detail overnight; the dominant theories of our day have expanded and changed over many decades. That it will take time should not discourage us. That we might fail to pursue our ideas - given the enormous need for them in society today - is unconscionable. ~ Charlotte Bunch

Lamm's system - dubbed the Baron Lamm Technique - worked well. From 1919 to 1930 it brought Lamm hundreds of thousands of dollars from banks around the country; after his death it was taught to John Dillinger, among others.* Lamm's system, still employed today succeeded not only because of its conceptual strength but also because Lamm was able to communicate his ideas and translate them into the seamless performance of an immensely difficult task. He was an innovator who taught with discipline and exactitude. He inspired through information. In short, Baron Lamm was a master coach. ~ Daniel Coyle

America's not just [about] looking out for yourself, it's not just about greed, it's not just about trying to climb to the very top and keep everybody else down ... Hard work, that's a value. Looking out for one another, that's a value. The idea that we're all in it together and [that] I'm my brother's keeper and [my] sister's keeper, that's a value. ~ Barack Obama

You have not realized how I have developed. I was a schoolboy when you knew me. I am a man now. I have new passions new thoughts new ideas. I am different but you must not like me less. I am changed but you must always be my friend. ~ Oscar Wilde

Too much openness and you accept every notion, idea, and hypothesis-which is tantamount to knowing nothing. Too much skepticism-especially rejection of new ideas before they are adequately tested-and you're not only unpleasantly grumpy, but also closed to the advance of science. A judicious mix is what we need. ~ Carl Sagan

From quite early on, I had this idea of compartmentalized identities - 'this is how you are when you are with your mum, and this is how you are when you are with your dad' - so it seemed like I could never absolutely be myself. And the image of myself as compromised and inconsistent made me want to withdraw from the world even further. I had a sense of formulating a paper-mache version of myself to send out in the world, while I sat controlling it remotely from some smug suburban barracks. ~ Russell Brand

Life was about to take her away from here. Fro the place where she'd become herself. This sold little village that never changed but helped its inhabitants to change. She's arrived straight from art college full of avant-garde ideas, wearing shades of gray and seeing the world in black and white. So sure of herself. But here, in the middle of nowhere, she'd discovered color. And nuance. She'd learned this from the villagers, who'd been generous enough to lend her their souls to paint. Not as perfect human beings, but as flawed, struggling men and women. Filled with fear and uncertainty and, in at least one case, martinis. ~ Louise Penny

Plot is, I think, the good writer's last resort and the dullard's first choice. The story which results from it is apt to feel artificial and labored. I lean more heavily on intuition, and have been able to do that because my books tend to be based on situation rather than story. Some of the ideas which have produced those books are more complex than others, but the majority start out with the stark simplicity of a department store window display or a waxwork tableau. I want to put a group of characters (perhaps a pair; perhaps even just one) in some sort of predicament and then watch them try to work themselves free. My job isn't to help them work their way free, or manipulate them to safety - those are jobs which require the noisy jackhammer of plot - but to watch what happens and then write it down. ~ Stephen King

After years of telling corporate citizens to 'trust the system,' many companies must relearn instead to trust their people - and encourage their people to use neglected creative capacities in order to tap the most potent economic stimulus of all: idea power. ~ Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Ideas are not intellectuals' toys: ideas have consequences, for good and for ill, in what even intellectuals sometimes call "the real world". ~ George Weigel

I think having a great idea is vastly overrated. I know it sounds kind of crazy and counterintuitive. I don't think it matters what the idea is, almost. You need great execution. ~ Felix Dennis

There are really only three important things to remember in life: To care, to share, and to be fair. This is not a new idea at all, and yet, observing how most people live their lives, you might think it was. ~ Frederick Lenz

As far as Aunty Lee was concerned, people ought to go through the ideas they carried around in their heads as regularly as they turned out their store cupboards. No matter how wisely you shopped, there would be things in the depths that were past their expiration dates or gone damp and moldy---or that has been picked up on impulse and were no longer relevant. Aunty Lee believed everything inside a head or cupboard could affect everything else in it by going bad or just taking up more space than it was worth. ~ Ovidia Yu

For years I'd thought my color was black: deep, dark, thoughtful, mysterious. Black, you can hide behind. But now I know it is red. ~ Jami Attenberg

The Arab and the camel are inseparable. It's been said that and Arab would give up his wife rather than give up his camel. Personally, I haven't got a camel, but I think it's a great idea. ~ Groucho Marx

Kiddies, Graphic Design, if you wield it effectively, is Power. Power to transmit ideas that change everything. Power that can destroy an entire race or save a nation from despair. In this century, Germany chose to do the former with the swastika, and America opted for the latter with Mickey Mouse and Superman. ~ Chip Kidd

Languages are different for a reason. You can't move ideas between them without losing something. The Arabs are the only ones who've figured this out. They have the sense to call non-Arabic versions of the Criterion interpretations, not translations. ~ G. Willow Wilson

President Obama has been attacking relentlessly. In 2008 he said that if you're out of fresh ideas you use stale tactics against your opponent - you try and make your opponent unacceptable and that's what he is trying to do. ~ Rob Portman

It's hard to build models of inflation that don't lead to a multiverse. It's not impossible, so I think there's still certainly research that needs to be done. But most models of inflation do lead to a multiverse, and evidence for inflation will be pushing us in the direction of taking [the idea of a] multiverse seriously. ~ Alan Guth

I never could bear the idea of anyone's expecting something from me. It
always made me want to do just the opposite. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

I'm used to being behind a camera. That's much more natural for me. But if my life can inspire people, that's what I have to do. My idea is to be of service. ~ Zana Briski

It seems to me that the thing that makes the theater worthwhile is the fact that it attracts so many people with ideas who are constantly trying to share them with the public. Real art is illumination. It gives a man an idea he never had before or lights up ideas that were formless or only lurking in the shadows of his mind. It adds stature to life. ~ Brooks Atkinson

Sometimes I think that ideas float through the atmosphere like huge squishy pumpkins, waiting for heads to drop on. ~ Neil Gaiman

Historically, American liberals have been idealists, pressing forward toward the goals of greater freedom, social equality, and more meaningful democracy. The articulate exposition of a liberal ideology was necessary to convert others to liberal ideas and to reform existing institutions continuously along liberal lines. Today, however, the greatest need is not so much the creation of more liberal institutions as the successful defense of those which already exist. This defense requires American liberals to lay aside their liberal ideology and to accept the values of conservatism for the duration of the threat. Only by surrendering their liberal ideas for the present can liberals successfully defend their liberal institutions for the future. Liberals should not fear this change. Is a liberal any less liberal because he adjusts his thinking so as to defend most effectively the most liberal institutions in the world? To continue to expound the philosophy of liberalism simply gives the enemy a weapon with which to attack the society of liberalism. The defense of American institutions requires a conscious articulate conservatism which can spring only from liberals deeply concerned with the preservation of those institutions. As Boorstin, Niebuhr, and others have pointed out, the American political genius is manifest not in our ideas but in our institutions. The stimulus to conservatism comes not from the outworn creeds of third-rate thinkers but from the successful performance of ~ Samuel P. Huntington

I am for decriminalization. The significant aspect of that is that we don't force prostitutes to have to get a license to work. I think the whole idea of licensing consensual sex between adults is offensive. ~ Chester Brown

The pace of innovation may slow down or speed up depending on the appetite in the public markets, but the constant progress of technology doesn't really ever stop. There's always opportunities for new ideas and creative people to go build great things. I'm always interested in learning about those kinds of opportunities. ~ Adam Dell

The early removal from school of future officers of Britain's seapower, leaving them unacquainted with the subject matter and ideas of the distant and recent past, may account for the incapacity of no military thinking in a world that devoted itself to military action. With little thought of strategy, no study of the theory of war or of planned objective, war's glorious art may have been glorious, but with individual exceptions, it was more or less mindless. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

Reading is too intimate,' Spofforth said. 'It will put you too close to the feelings and ideas of others. It will disturb and confuse you. ~ Walter Tevis

I find it very fascinating that one person or a group of people can get together as a choir and come up with a song that ends up inspiring people to create emotions, love and togetherness. Communication, which comes from this idea that sparks off of humanity and becomes something that is cherished and loved by the people, is very fascinating to me. ~ Damian Marley

I started doing radio pieces with no clear, preconceived idea, except that I have a tendency to be theatrical. ~ Ricky Jay

She has only one fault; too many ideas. ~ Henry James