Ideas

Quotations on the subject of Ideas.

Sourced

• Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.
  • Howard H. Aiken, as quoted in Portraits in Silicon (1987) by Robert Slater
  • Variant: Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
    • As quoted in A Computer Science Reader : Selections from Abacus (1988) by Eric A. Weiss, p. 404

• It’s important not to overstate the benefits of ideas. Quite frankly, I know it’s kind of a romantic notion that you’re just going to have this one brilliant idea and then everything is going to be great. But the fact is that coming up with an idea is the least important part of creating something great. It has to be the right idea and have good taste, but the execution and delivery are what’s key.
  • Sergey Brin. Interviewed by Jemima Kiss for The Guardian (UK) newspaper, ‘Secrets of a nimble giant’, Wednesday 17th June 2009

• Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.
  • Alfred Whitney Griswold, in Essays on Education as quoted in The New York Times (24 February 1959)

• It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on.
  • Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed, Ch. 3

• A person with imprecise ideas can understand little and be of less help to others.
  • Ignatius of Loyola to Teresa Rejadell, letter of 11 September 1536

• Ideas, unlike solid structures, do not perish. They remain immortal, immaterial and everywhere, like all Divine things. Ideas are a golden, savage landscape that we wander unaware, without a map. Be careful: in the last analysis, reality may be exactly what we think it is.
  • Alan Moore, in What Is Reality?

• There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There's only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof. Farewell.
  • "V" in V for Vendetta by Alan Moore

• One thing I learnt was never to hoard ideas because either they are not so relevant or they've gone stale. Whatever it is, pour them out.
  • Mary Quant, Daily Express, 29th October 2008.

• We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten, but 400 years later, an idea can still change the world. I've witnessed first hand the power of ideas. I've seen people kill in the name of them, and die defending them ... but you cannot kiss an idea, cannot touch it, or hold it ... ideas do not bleed, they do not feel pain, they do not love...And it is not an idea that I miss, it is a man.
  • Evey Hammond in V for Vendetta by the Wachowski brothers, based on the comic series by Alan Moore

• Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.
  • "V" in V for Vendetta by the Wachowski brothers, based on the comic series by Alan Moore

Unsourced

• Words are pegs to hang ideas on.
  • Henry Ward Beecher

• If it's a good idea, go ahead and do it. It is much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.
  • Admiral Grace Hopper

• If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.
  • Albert Einstein

• Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds.
  • Albert Einstein

• A good idea is like a yo-yo-it may go to the end of its string, but it doesn't die there; it only sleeps. Eventually it rolls back up into your palm.
  • Stephen King

• The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.
  • Linus Pauling

• No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.
  • Sir Frederick Banting

• All great ideas are controversial, or have been at one time.
  • George Seldes