Ideas Quotes - Page 305

We have no idea where the world is going, except that it's going there very fast.

Why do humans never do as they're told? Someone should replace you all with robots. No, on second though, they shouldn't, bad idea.

Sounded to me like he had a pretty good idea what he was saying," Van replied, with surprisingly little anger. "It's a pity he had to overintellectualize like that. He did such good work, and then he had to go and intellectualize it.

I have two ideas for novels at the moment, neither of them all that conventional, but I'm not ready to choose between them yet, let alone settle down to the process of writing.

Illiberal left ideology has its greatest strength on campuses because campuses are one of the few places in American life where a certain kind of far-left politics can actually impose hegemony on other ideas and really control the discourse in a way it can't in most places in American life where even moderate liberals are more of a minority.

A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist-- ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.

I think a lot about how ideas spread, how information spreads, why is it that something youre really proud of and you spend a lot of time creating sometimes doesnt go anywhere, and something that you kind of do on the side, on a lark, ends up getting shared and passed around and having this big impact.

'Allen Gregory' came about because we wanted an animated show and we were just tossing around some ideas about me playing a 7-year-old. We thought that would be cool, because we couldn't do that in real life.

But there's a fourth interpretation: Obama can't leave his comfort zone. No president since Woodrow Wilson has been as enamored of abstract ideas or more sure that disagreement with him is proof of ignorance, bad faith or dogmatism. As a candidate, he insisted his real opponent was 'cynicism,' and in his address last week, he returned to this trite formulation, insisting again he was bravely battling the cynics.

Environmental concern is a little like dieting or paying off credit-card debt - an episodically terrific idea that burns brightly and then seems to fade when we realize there's a reason we need to diet or pay down our debt. The reason is that it's really, really hard, and too many of us in too many spheres of life choose the easy over the hard.

Usually for me, the melodic structures come out in the water and the lyrical ideas could come from a book I'm reading.

It's really hard to fit a complex idea into a 3-minute pop song. And when you're dealing with issues that you're passionate about, usually they have various levels. And within a poem, you can get around the issue of space, and in a song the same way, by simply leaving holes and alluding to what you're talking about.

When I made 'Hard Boiled,' I had no idea that it would be released to an international audience. I just wanted to make a film to team up my two favorite actors, Tony Leung and Chow Yun-Fat.

I went to the Vatican once - it was a bad idea. I went into the bookshop and I bought hideous, pious postcards and then I asked for a receipt, and the nun said, "We don't give receipts at the Vatican." Which threw me into a rage of like, "I guess not, so you can take this money and funnel it into anti-homosexual groups!" People had to drag me out of there. It's not good for me to go into the Vatican.

When will we get done with the fool idea that the way to make a party grow is to scare away everybody who has an extra dollar in his pocket? God forbid that the Democratic Party should become a mere gathering of the unsuccessful!

Do your homework or hire wise experts to help you. Never jump into a business you have no idea about.

Truth emerges from the clash of adverse ideas.

He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.

And I tell you one thing, if the primates that we came from, had know that someday politicians would come out of the gene pool, they would have stayed up in the trees and written evolution off as a bad idea.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

Public life, politics and industry should all of them be within our sphere of influence.... If we are to infiltrate the professional and social activities of other people I think we must imitate the Totalitarians and organize some kind of fifth column activity! If better ideas on mental health are to progress and spread we, as the salesmen, must lose our identity... Let us all, therefore, very secretly be 'fifth columnists.'

Canada is either an idea or it does not exist. It is either an intellectual undertaking or it is little more than a resource-rich vacuum lying in the buffer zone just north of a great empire.

Well, it's because I gladly acknowledge some ideas that are part of process theology, but which I think are not tied to all the details of process thought, and are very illuminating and helpful.

While negativity is politically useful, it is also demoralizing unless it is accompanied - and to some extent overshadowed - by elevated and inspiring ideas about the American future.

You just try to be true to your idea of what is funny and what is also interesting.