It seems that in the advanced stages of stupidity, a lack of ideas is compensated for by an excess of ideologies.
It is not usually our ideas that make us optimists or pessimists, but it is our optimism or our pessimism that makes our ideas.[No suelen ser nuestras ideas las que nos hacen optimistas o pesimistas, sino que es nuestro optimismo o nuestro pesimismo el que hace nuestras ideas.]
In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.
In general, scientific progress calls for no more than the absorption and elaboration of new ideas — and this is a call most scientists are happy to heed.
If you are to rule men, you must rule them through their own ideas.
If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.
Ideas, like ghosts, must be spoken to a little before they will explain themselves.
Ideas on Earth were badges of friendship or enmity. Their content did not matter. Friends agreed with friends, in order to express friendliness. Enemies disagreed with enemies, in order to express enmity.
Ideas consume the ages as passions consume men. When man is cured, humanity may possibly cure itself.[Les idées dévorent les siècles comme les hommes sont dévorés par leurs passions. Quand l’homme sera guéri, l’humanité se guérira peut-être.]
Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.
I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays, and have things arranged for them, that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas in holiday time.
First comes the thought; then, organization of that thought into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.