Quotes on Ideas

The path of descent is the path of transformation. Darkness, failure, relapse, death, and woundedness are our primary teachers, rather than ideas or doctrines.

Once you define exactly what your purpose is you won’t even have to try to figure out how to make money. The ideas will flow freely as if someone was whispering in your ear. Everything will come together beautifully.

I think that fiction and, as I say, history and biography are immensely important, not only for their own sake, because they provide a picture of life now and of life in the past, but also as vehicles for the expression of general philosophic ideas, religious ideas, social ideas.

Don't wait till you're older, or in some better job than you have now. Don't wait for anything. Don't wait till some magical...idea drops into your lap. That's not where ideas come from. Go looking for an idea and it'll show up. Begin now.

To claim that the souls of men will be happy or unhappy after the death of the body, is to pretend that man will be able to see without eyes, to hear without ears, to taste without a palate, to smell without a nose, and to feel without hands and without skin. Nations who believe themselves very rational, adopt, nevertheless, such ideas.

My advice is not to wait to be struck by an idea. If you're a writer, you sit down and damn well decide to have an idea. That's the way to get an idea.

The next time someone starts listing all the reasons an idea won't work or can't happen, ask them to give 3 reasons it can.

Then I came up with this crazy idea just to walk out on the stage with no band at all and just start singing whatever came to mind. I actually fought the idea for a while because it seemed almost too radical, but it became obvious what I was supposed to be doing.

The lack of resources is no longer an excuse not to act. The idea that action should only be taken after all the answers and the resources have been found is a sure recipe for paralysis. The planning of a city is a process that allows for corrections; it is supremely arrogant to believe that planning can be done only after every possible variable has been controlled.

An idea isn't worth that much. It's the execution of the idea that has value. If you can't convince one other person that this is something to devote your life to, then it's not worth it.

Never put a lid on God. You can give God a thimble and ask for a quart. It won't work. Your plans, your projects, your dreams have to always be bigger than you, so God has room to operate. I want you to get good ideas, crazy ideas, extravagant ideas. Nothing is too much for The Lord to do - accent on 'The Lord'.

There are ideas in our hearts, there are wishes, there are aspirations, there are groanings, there are sighings that the world knows nothing about; but God knows them. So words are not always necessary. When we cannot express our feelings except in wordless groanings, God knows exactly what is happening.

The point about democracy is not that it delivers legitimate, effective, prosperous rule of law. It's not that it guarantees peace with itself or with its neighbors. ... Democracy matters because it reflects an idea of equality.

I have had work or ideas come through me from a source that I honestly cannot identify. And what is that thing? And how are we to relate to it in a way that will not make us lose our minds, but, in fact, might actually keep us sane?

Every voice doesn't matter--only the voices that move your idea forward, that make it better, that make you better, that make it more likely you will ship work that benefits your tribe.

I see men assassinated around me every day. I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead; men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas.

There is plenty of time to argue with new ideas later. They key is to take careful notes first and debate second.

Give your child a single valuable idea, and you have done more for his education than if you had laid upon his mind the burden of bushels of information.

Don't stop. Narrow your focus to one idea, and make it work. That will give birth to all of the others. All you can do is plant the seed and water it.

Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple

You must not feel persecuted and examined. Liberate yourself from the idea that people are watching you.