The document contains 55 quotes about ideas from various notable figures. Many of the quotes discuss how ideas can transform over time from vague notions to fully formed concepts that are acted upon. Several quotes note that implementing an idea is often very different from its initial conception, and that truly innovative ideas may face resistance before gaining acceptance. The collection as a whole emphasizes the power of ideas to influence individuals and society.
27. “ No idea is isolated, but is only what it is among all ideas” Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
28. “ All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you can not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change” Gilbert K. Chesterton
29. “ Right now it's only a notion, but I think I can get the money to make it into a concept, and later turn it into an idea” Woody Allen
30. “ An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself” Charles Dickens
31. “ The history of the changes produced by a universal idea is not a history of changes in the individual, but of changes brought about by the successive efforts of millions of individuals in the course of many generations” Lafcadio Hearn
32. “ An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought” Pablo Picasso
33. “ Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice” Sydney J. Harris
34. “ If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it” Charles Kettering
35. “ Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervor, live for it, and if need be, die for it” Alfred North Whitehead
36. “ The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea” Thomas Mann
37. “ Nearly everyone who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That's not the place to become discouraged” Thomas A. Edison
38. “ My idea of a writer: someone interested in everything” Susan Sontag
39. “ The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas” Linus Pauling
40. “ No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there” F. Scott Fitzgerald
41. “ A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it” Marcel Proust
42. “ Ideas must be put to the test. That's why we make things, otherwise they would be no more than ideas. There is often a huge difference between an idea and its realisation” Andy Goldsworthy
43. “ There is often a huge difference between an idea and its realisation. I've had what I thought were great ideas that just didn't work” Andy Goldsworthy
44. “ The ability to express an idea is well nigh as important as the idea itself” Bernard Baruch
45. “ Everyone who's ever taken a shower has an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference” Nolan Bushnell
46. “ Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds” Albert Einstein
47. “ Ideas are great arrows, but there has to be a bow” Bill Moyers
48. “ If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas” George Bernard Shaw
49. “ For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned” George Santayana
50. “ Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world” Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
51. “ Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won” Ralph Waldo Emerson
52. “ Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own” Sydney J Harris
53. “ You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created” Albert Einstein
54. “ The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift” Albert Einstein
55. “ Only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts” Albert Einstein
56. “ It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science” Carl Sagan
57. “ Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way” Williams James
58. “ New ideas fail because they are new and unknown, old ideas fail because they are old and too well known” Ricardo Sosa