“After passionately nursing this idea for about an hour, I suddenly had another idea: no I wouldn t. Of course I wouldn t make an entire city out of cereal boxes in the basement. The moment I had this second thought, I knew this was the real one.”
“Every writer or wanna-be writer has ideas for books. The problem isn t finding an idea, it s choosing one”
“And, if you ll investigate the history of science, my dear boy, I think you ll find that most of the really big ideas have come from intelligent playfulness. All the sober, thin-lipped concentration is really just a matter of tidying up around the fringes of the big ideas.”
“No original thought still exists. People are original, each one of them. The same ideas that others had before you are waiting for you to bring them back to life in a new way. The part of who you are that is left behind within these old ideas is what makes them original all over again.”
“Ideas have significance for him only as a prelude to action.”
“In the particular dwells the tawdry. In the conceptual dwells the grand, the transcendent, the everlasting. Earthly countries and single malignant boys can go to hell; the idea of countries and the idea of sons triumph for eternity.”
“Hang ideas! They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy!”
“15 General ideas and great conceit are always a fair way to bring about terrible misfortune.”
“We have to face the idea that we re completely nobody right now”
“Thought assists memory in enabling it to order the material it has assembled. So that in a systematically ordered memory every idea is individually followed by all conclusions it entails.”
“Be Clever, Think Clever and Do Clever”
“An idea? An idea won t get you nothing but another idea. You need money, cash, to make anything happen in this doggone world.”
“Million dollar ideas are a dime a dozen. The determination to see the idea through is what s priceless.”
“Some ideas take you to the stars; some sinks you to the mud!”
“Certaines choses que Napoléon dit des femmes, plusieurs discussiions sur le mérite des romans à la mode sous son règne lui donnèrent alors, pour la première fois, quelques idées que tout autre jeune home de son age aurait eues depuis longtemps.”
“The movies remind me of the Triangle Club at Princeton. I used to belong to it, and we always started out firm in our decision to create new and startling things. We always ended up by producing the same old show. In the beginning, our enthusiasm and ideals discarded as rubbish all the old fossilized plots.”
“Hope is not some abstract, softheaded concept. It is an idea with an engine.”