I am interested in the shape of ideas even if I do not believe in them. There is a wonderful sentence in Augustine… ‘Do not despair: one of the thieves was saved; do not presume: one of the thieves was damned.’ That sentence had a wonderful shape. It is the shape that matters.
Ideas Quotes
You can imprison a man, but not an idea. You can exile a man, but not an idea. You can kill a man, but not an idea.
I never said I had no idea about most of the things you said I said I had no idea about. (U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, at Iran-Contra Hearings, 1987)
It is very a dangerous thing to have an idea that you will not practice.
It is our function to keep in view and to command the movement of ideas, which are not the effect but the cause of public events.
There is no adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact of a new idea.
For every person who thinks up a magnificent breakthrough idea, there are a hundred who are nothing more than mindless and unimportant implementers of the idea. The reason for the imbalance in numbers is that the implementers tend to kill the people with the great ideas in order to cut down on the workload. (“Dilbert”)
A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.
Not to engage in this pursuit of ideas is to live like ants instead of like men.
If you want to get across an idea, wrap it up in person.
