Ideas Quotes - Page 174

To criticize mathematics for its abstraction is to miss the point entirely. Abstraction is what makes mathematics work. If you concentrate too closely on too limited an application of a mathematical idea, you rob the mathematician of his most important tools: analogy, generality, and simplicity. Mathematics is the ultimate in technology transfer.

We have to challenge the whole idea that it's acceptable for a society like Britain to have such a significant number of people who do not work one day of the week and don't have any possibility of improving the quality of their lives.

The crusades of Vietnam and Watergate seemed like a good idea at the time, even a noble one, not only to the press but perhaps to a majority of Americans.

Above all do not ask that justice be just: It is just, because it is justice. The idea of a just justice could have originated only in the brain of an anarchist.

The American system is, in many ways, more difficult, certainly far more expensive and much longer than a parliamentary system, and I really admire the people who subject themselves to it. Even when I, you know, think they should not be elected president, I still think, well, you know, good for you I guess, you're out there promoting democracy and those crazy ideas of yours.

The smallest quantity of alcohol scares away novel ideas.

Ideas are, in truth, forces. Infinite, too, is the power of personality. A union of the two always makes history.

If you take this life to be simply what old religious folks pretend (I mean the effete, gone to seed in a drought, mere human galls stung by the devil once), then all your joy and serenity is reduced to grinning and bearing it. The fact is, you have got to take the world on your shoulders like Atlas, and "put along" with it. You will do this for an idea's sake, and your success will be in proportion to your devotion to ideas. It may make your back ache occasionally, but you will have the satisfaction of hanging it or twirling it to suit yourself.

New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion.

The State is the curse of the individual... The State must go! That will be a revolution which will find me on its side. Undermine the idea of the State, set up in its place spontaneous action, and the idea that spiritual relationship is the only thing that makes for unity, and you will start the elements of a liberty which will be something worth possessing.

Often when works at a hard question, nothing good is accomplished at the first attack. Then one takes a rest, long or short, and sits down anew to the work. During the first half-hour, as before, nothing is found, and then all of a sudden the decisive idea presents itself to the mind.

The press is hostile to the idea of liberty. Most people in the press are for big government. Most people think that the solution to anything, whether it's health care problems, education, whatever it is - it's got to be more government.

I don't have ideas so much as there are things which constantly evolve... there are various threads or layers, if you like, which change.

The first and most important thing is to remain free, free in each line you undertake, in your ideas and in your political action, in your moral conduct. The artist especially must remain free from all outer restraints.

I have no trouble publishing in Soviet astrophysical journals, but my work is unacceptable to the American astrophysical journals.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

Don't delay acting on a good idea. Chances are someone else has just thought of it, too. Success comes to the one who acts first.

Human history is, in essence, a history of ideas.

I got too fed up with films that didn't make you think. I liked the idea of one that you'd have to be dancing around with. I like my mind to be engaged when I watch a film.

I have my ideas of what a good documentary is, but drama is a different animal because you're arranging everything.

He gave her a bright fake smile; so much of life was a putting off of unhappiness for another time. Nothing was ever lost by delay. He had a dim idea that perhaps if one delayed long enough, things were taken out of one's hands altogether by death.

I'm busy communicating ideas.... I want you to know what I'm thinking. If you feel a connection, good. If you don't, fine.

I believe in a kind of fidelity to your own early ideas; it's a kind of antagonism in me to prevailing fads.

If you have a clear idea of a soul, you will have a clear idea of a form; for it is of the same genus, though a different species.

The original languages didn't even have he and she. They didn't have concepts of masculine and feminine. People were people. And the whole idea was that we were in a circle together, not in a hierarchy together.