It seems that in the advanced stages of stupidity, a lack of ideas is compensated for by an excess of ideologies.
It is wise to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.
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.]
It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.
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.
If an idea isn’t exciting you shouldn’t do it.
If all we needed were ideas and positive thinking, then we all would have had ponies when we were kids and we would all be living our “dream life” now.
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.
