Ideas Are Power Quotes & Sayings

Ideas are intangible forces, but they have more power than the physical brains that give birth to them. They have the power to live on, after the brain that creates them has returned to dust. — Napoleon Hill

For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking. — Stephen Hawking

There are plenty of good ideas, if only they can be backed with the power of action. — Winston Churchill

I am a democrat [proponent of democracy] because I believe in the Fall of Man.
I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that every one deserved a share in the government.
The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they're not true ... I find that they're not true without looking further than myself. I don't deserve a share in governing a hen-roost. Much less a nation ...
The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters. — C.S. Lewis

If one gives sufficient social power to a class of people holding even the most outlandish ideas, they will, consciously or not, eventually contrive to produce a world organized in such a way that living in it will, in a thousand subtle ways, reinforce the impression that those ideas are self-evidently true. — David Graeber

Now, ideas are the raw material of progress. Everything first takes shape in the form of an idea. But an idea itself is worth nothing. An idea, like a machine, must have power applied to it before it can accomplish anything. The men who have won fame and fortune through having an idea are those who devoted every ounce of their strength and every dollar they could muster to putting it into operation. Ford had a big idea, but he had to sweat and suffer and sacrifice to make it work. — B.C. Forbes

mechanical reinterpretations of human affairs not only lack explanatory power, they are morally wrong as well, for in effect they deny the humanity of the participants, casting them and their ideas merely as side effects of the landscape. Diamond — David Deutsch

Groups give us power when we are enthusiastic, speak up, make bold assertions, and express an interest in others. Our capacity to influence rises when we practice kindness, express appreciation, cooperate, and dignify what others say and do. We are more likely to make a difference in the world when we are focused, articulate clear purposes and courses of action, and keep others on task. We rise in power when we provide calm and remind people of broader perspectives during times of stress, tell stories that calm during times of tension, and practice kind speech. Our opportunity for influence increases when we are open and ask great questions, listen to others with receptive minds, and offer playful ideas and novel perspectives. The — Dacher Keltner

In Hollywood, story content of movies follows a hierarchy of power, not the relative quality of various ideas. Hollywood does not lack for quality writing. It's just that quality writing commonly has to be sacrificed in order to propel a film into production. A studio needs a star and a director to make a film, so those are the folk who'll define the content. If they don't have the same creative sensibilities, then the content will change. — Terry Rossio

It is not a question of money, power, and prestige; it is a question of what intrinsically you want to do. Do it, irrespective of the results, and your boredom will disappear. You must be following others' ideas, you must be doing things in a "right" way, you must be doing things as they should be done. These are the foundation stones of boredom. The whole of humanity is bored — Osho

Your subconscious is like a computer - more complex a computer than men can build - and its main function is the integration of your ideas. Who programs it? Your conscious mind. If you default, if you don't reach any firm convictions, your subconscious is programmed by chance - and you deliver yourself into the power of ideas you do not know you have accepted. But one way or the other, your computer gives you print-outs, daily and hourly, in the form of emotions - which are lightning-like estimates of the things around you, calculated according to your values. If you programmed your computer by conscious thinking, you know the nature of your values and emotions. If you didn't, you don't. — Ayn Rand

Book authors are in high demand for speaking engagements and appearances; they are the new 'celebrity' and celebrities gain access. Authors not only make money from royalties or book advances but from their keynotes, presentations and strategically branded product lines. This includes entrepreneurial ideas for you to extend yourself beyond just writing and prepares you to add speaking and consulting to your revenue stream. You have to begin to look outside book sales and towards the speaking market. There are radio, interviews, news, television, small channel television keynotes, lectures, seminars and workshops. These types of events have the possibility to be much more lucrative than just selling books. In essence, the book builds and brands you in the public eye. It gives you credibility and the opportunity to be more than you are. It enables you to now be a voice, a teacher, a leader, an expert - after all, you wrote the book on it! — Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

You are already leaders. Your ideas, your actions and your decisions make a difference. More than any other generation, you have a voice. Social networking is changing how we interact - and it can change our world. You are in touch with peers from around the world. You understand the power of instant communication. I appeal to you to use that power for the common good, the power of communication and the power of networking. — Ban Ki-moon

I write because writing is power. Writing is creation. When you write, you are as a god, a deity wielding his pen like some Harry Potter staff, making whatever you want to happen, happen. By sheer force of will and some clever word placement, I can arrange all of these little symbols together to invoke emotions and ideas at a whim out of whosoever allows me to cast my spell. It does not take a man and a woman to create. It just takes a writer. — Jonathan Culver

If you could only speak the devil fair enough, he might save you the cost of the doctor. Such strange lingering echoes of the old demon-worship might perhaps even now be caught by the diligent listener among the grey-haired peasantry; for the rude mind with difficulty associates the ideas of power and benignity. A shadowy conception of power that by much persuasion can be induced to refrain from inflicting harm, is the shape most easily taken by the sense of the Invisible in the minds of men who have always been pressed close by primitive wants, and to whom a life of hard toil has never been illuminated by any enthusiastic religious faith. To them pain and mishap present a far wider range of possibilities than gladness and enjoyment: their imagination is almost barren of the images that feed desire and hope, but is all overgrown by recollections that are a perpetual pasture to fear. — George Eliot

I've seen people that are extremely brilliant and they don't have the staying power. They don't have that never give up quality. I've always said that other than bad ideas, which is a reason for failure, the ability to never ever quit or give up is something that is very, very important for success as an entrepreneur. — Donald Trump

When you see evil do not form ideas that are in the likeness of that evil; do not think of the evil as bad, but try to understand the forces that are back of that evil - forces that are good in themselves, though misdirected in their present state. By trying to understand the nature of the power that is back of evil or adversity, you will not form bad ideas, and therefore will feel no bad effects from experiences that may seem undesirable. At the same time, you will think your own thought about the experiences, thereby developing the power of the master mind. — Christian D. Larson

Truth has power. And if we all gravitate toward similar ideas, maybe we do so because those ideas are true ... written deep within us. And when we hear the truth, even if we don't understand it, we feel that truth resonate within us ... vibrating with our unconscious wisdom. Perhaps the truth is not learned by us, but rather, the truth is re-called ... re-membered ... -re-cognized ... as that which is already inside us. — Dan Brown

It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made, that we exist. That discovery is called the Fall of Man. Ever afterwards, we suspect our instruments. We have learned that we do not see directly, but mediately, and that we have no means of correcting these colored and distorting lenses which we are, or of computing the amount of their errors. Perhaps these subject-lenses have a creative power; perhaps there are no objects. Once we lived in what we saw; now, the rapaciousness of this new power, which threatens to absorb all things, engages us. Nature, art, persons, letters, religions - objects, successively tumble in, and God is but one of its ideas. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The 4 "I" in Simple Ideas: Involve individuals; Inspire crowds; Instil creativity; Innovate humanity ! — Miguel Reynolds Brandao

On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" Now let's look at how Einstein articulated all of this in the famous paper that the Annalen der Physik received on June 30, 1905. For all its momentous import, it may be one of the most spunky and enjoyable papers in all of science. Most of its insights are conveyed in words and vivid thought experiments, rather than in complex equations. There is some math involved, but it is mainly what a good high school senior could comprehend. "The whole paper is a testament to the power of simple language to convey deep and powerfully disturbing ideas," says the science writer Dennis Overbye. — Walter Isaacson

Your happiness depends on three things, all of which are within your power: your will, your ideas concerning the events in which you are involved, and the use you make of your ideas. — Epictetus

Authoritarian governments are now trying to ensure that the increasingly free flow of ideas and information through cyberspace fuels their economies without threatening their political power. — Ian Bremmer

The World is full of fools and crackpots - people who were never given tools to fill their lives up with, and consequently have made their lives so meaningless the only way they can feel good about themselves is to look around and see who they're better than. When they can't find someone, they create someone. Their ideas are meaningless- right up until we start to fight against them. We're the ones who give power to the bigots. We make their ideas real by opposing them. — Chris Crutcher

It is always unconscionable for the government to punish people for expressing an idea merely because government officials - or the majority of citizens - decide that those ideas are 'dangerous' or 'wrong.' That is a power nobody ought to possess. — Glenn Greenwald

We could express this power in the following way: Most of the time we live in an interior world of dreams, desires, and obsessive thoughts. But in this period of exceptional creativity, we are impelled by the need to get something done that has a practical effect. We force ourselves to step outside our inner chamber of habitual thoughts and connect to the world, to other people, to reality. Instead of flitting here and there in a state of perpetual distraction, our minds focus and penetrate to the core of something real. At these moments, it is as if our minds - turned outward - are now flooded with light from the world around us, and suddenly exposed to new details and ideas, we become more inspired and creative. — Robert Greene

There are two kinds of great power which can shake the earth: Mega earthquakes and big ideas! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

As recently as the early 1970s, a Republican president - Richard Nixon - was willing to impose wage and price controls to rescue the U.S. economy from crisis, popularizing the notion that "We are all Keynesians now." But by the 1980s, the battle of ideas waged out of the same Washington think tanks that now deny climate change had successfully managed to equate the very idea of industrial planning with Stalin's five-year plans. Real capitalists don't plan, these ideological warriors insisted - they unleash the power of the profit motive and let the market, in its infinite wisdom, create the best possible society for all. — Naomi Klein

People rely on intelligence to solve problems, and they are naturally baffled when comprehension proves impotent to effect emotional change. To the neocortical brain, rich in the power of abstractions, understanding makes all the difference, but it doesn't count for much in the neural systems that evolved before understanding existed. Ideas bounce like so many peas off the sturdy incomprehension of the limbic and reptilian brains. The dogged implicitness of emotional knowledge, its relentless unreasoning force, prevents logic from granting salvation just as it precludes self-help books from helping. The sheer volume and variety of self-help paraphernalia testify at once to the vastness of the appetite they address and their inability to satisfy it. (118) — Thomas Lewis

But, said Lewis, myths are lies, even though lies breathed through silver.
No, said Tolkien, they are not.
... just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.
We have come from God (continued Tolkien), and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming a 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.
You mean, asked Lewis, that the story of Christ is simply a true myth, a myth that works on us in the same way as the others, but a myth that really happened? In that case, he said, I begin to understand. — Humphrey Carpenter

Well, I think, you know, the arts are really what - one of the things that make this country strong. We always think it's our economy or our military power, but in fact, I think it's our culture, our civilization, our ideas, our creativity. — Caroline Kennedy

There was just such a man when I was young - an Austrian who invented a new way of life and convinced himself that he was the chap to make it work. He tried to impose his reformation by the sword, and plunged the civilized world into misery and chaos. But the thing which this fellow had overlooked, my friend, was that he had a predecessor in the reformation business, called Jesus Christ. Perhaps we may assume that Jesus knew as much as the Austrian did about saving people. But the odd thing is that Jesus did not turn the disciples into strom troopers, burn down the Temple at Jerusalem, and fix the blame on Pontius Pilate. On the contrary, he made it clear that the business of the philosopher was to make ideas available, and not to impose them on people. — T.H. White

A narcissist with power will attempt to prove in the world only what is already in his head. He can't 'see' otherwise. For him, the 'outside world' is not beyond him and does not question or challenge him and his ideas. He is the world. Others will assent to his distorted worldview, because he is powerful, not because he is believable. If he possesses any reflection, that will be exactly what will gnaw at the narcissist with power most of all: his 'truths' are inauthentic, and he is a human being without integrity. The very narcissism and power he possesses prevent him from an ongoing relationship with the truth, which begins with self-humility and the curiosity this can create in a person. — Sergio Troncoso

Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system-the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side-they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but can't afford airtime in a commercialized, status-consciou s, and cynical world. — Alain De Botton

Just as women supplement men in private life, so they will supplement men in public life by concentrating their organized efforts on those objects which men are likely to ignore. There is a tremendous field for women as active protagonists of new ideas and new methods of political and social housekeeping. When organized and conscious of their power to influence their surroundings, women can use their newly acquired freedom in a great many ways to mold the world into a better place to live in. — Edward Bernays

Passions are merely ideas in their initial stage. They are the property of youth, and anyone who expects to feel their thrill throughout his life is a fool. Tranquil rivers often begin as roaring waterfalls, but no river leaps and foams all the way to the sea. Tranquility, however, is often a sign of great, if hidden, power. Intensity and depth of feeling and thought preclude wild outbursts of passion; in sorrow and joy the soul takes careful stock of every situation, and sees that so it must be. — Mikhail Lermontov

All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust, and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society. — Edmund Burke

Genius: Range of mind, power of imagination, and responsiveness of soul: this is genius. The man of genius has a soul with greater range, can therefore be struck by the feelings of all beings, is concerned with everything in nature, and never receives an idea that does not evoke a feeling. Everything stirs him and everything is retained within him.
When the soul has been moved by an object itself, it is even more affected by the memory of the object. But in a man of genius imagination goes further: it recalls ideas with a more vivid feeling than it received them, because to these ideas are connected a thousand others more appropriate to arouse the feeling. — Jean-Francois De Saint-Lambert

Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times very different from the present, by men whose power of action upon things was insignificant in comparison with ours. But the amazing growth of our techniques, the adaptability and precision they have attained, the ideas and habits they are creating, make it a certainty that profound changes are impending in the ancient craft of the Beautiful. In all the arts there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and power. For the last twenty years neither matter nor space nor time has been what it was from time immemorial. We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art. — Paul Valery

if this store of cosmic prana were inanimate, without a will and a direction of its own, we could very well flatter ourselves that every thought and fancy that we have is the product of our own volition. but since we are ourselves the products of this superintelligent cosmic power, it would be illogical to the last degree to presume that our individual ideas and fancies are exclusively our own creations and have no relationship to the ocean of which we are but a tiny drop. when it is once admitted that mind and consciousness are cosmic entities, it would then be ridiculous to suppose that the thoughts and ideas in an individual atom of this cosmic consciousness can have an entirely independent existence and not reflect the will and design of the cosmic whole. — Gopi Krishna

Sometimes I worry, for myself, that I've stopped being amazed at certain things, or I've taken for granted a set of ideas about how the world works, what people are doing with each other or alone, all the fundamental relationships in the world. I worry that I start taking it for granted and stop feeling the intensity of it because of language. Language starts to shut down the strength and power and strangeness of what it means to be a person in the world. — Ben Marcus

I have stated, that in the thirteen species of ground-finches, a nearly perfect gradation may be traced, from a beak extraordinarily thick, to one so fine, that it may be compared to that of a warbler. — Charles Darwin

The accepted ideas of any period are singularly those that serve the dominant economic interest ... What economists believe and teach, whether in the United States or in the Soviet Union, is rarely hostile to the institutions - the private business enterprise, the Communist Party - that reflect the dominant economic power. Not to notice this takes effort, although many succeed. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Humans are mortal. So are ideas. An idea needs propagation as much as a plant needs watering. Otherwise both will wither and die. — B.R. Ambedkar

No doubt that anarchist ideas are frightening to those in power. People in power can tolerate liberal ideas. They can tolerate ideas that call for reforms, but they cannot tolerate the idea that there will be no state, no central authority. So it is very important for them to ridicule the idea of anarchism to create this impression of anarchism as violent and chaotic. It is useful for them. — Howard Zinn

It is eminently reasonable that men should seek to associate with those who share their convictions and values. It is impossible to deal or even to communicate with men whose ideas are fundamentally opposed to one's own (and one should be free not to deal with them). All proper associations are formed or joined by individual choice and on conscious, intellectual grounds (philosophical, political, professional, etc.) - not by the physiological or geographical accident of birth, and not on the ground of tradition. When men are united by ideas, i.e., by explicit principles, there is no room for favors, whims, or arbitrary power: the principles serve as an objective criterion for determining actions and for judging men, whether leaders or members. — Ayn Rand

God likes His people to believe that there is nothing too hard for Him ... We are all the time limiting God's power by our own ideas. Let us get our eyes off one another and fix them upon God. There is nothing to hard for Him. — Dwight L. Moody

The great protagonists are those who fight for their ideas and ideals despite the fact that they receive no recognition at the hands of their contemporaries. They are the men whose memories will be enshrined in the hearts of the future generations. It seems then as if each individual felt it his duty to make retroactive atonement for the wrong which great men have suffered at the hands of their contemporaries. Their lives and their work are then studied with touching and grateful admiration. Especially in dark days of distress, such men have the power of healing broken hearts and elevating the despairing spirit of a people. — Adolf Hitler

Varied are the ideas of what constitutes "success," e.g. money, position, power, achievement, honours, and the like. But these are not open to every man-nor do they bring what is real success, namely, happiness. — Robert Baden-Powell

Weapons and technology may help win wars, but it is only ideas that have the power to truly change the world. — Simon Adams

I did it because he wasn't fair to you. Because you deserve credit for what you've done. Because he needs to realize you aren't the person he's always thought you were. He needs to see you for who you really are, not for all the ideas and preconceptions he's built up around you." The power in Adrian's gaze was so strong that I kept talking. I was nervous about meeting that stare in silence. Also, part of me was afraid that if I pondered my own words too hard, I'd discover they were just as much about my own father and me as Adrian and his. "It should have been enough for you to tell him who you are - show him who you are - but he wouldn't listen — Richelle Mead

Capitalists are motivated not chiefly by the desire to consume wealth or indulge their appetites, but by the freedom and power to consummate their entrepreneurial ideas. — George Gilder

When we really need to work hard to make sure that these ideas about constructive social change culturally, ecologically and politically, come to pass. And that's only going to happen if people support the leadership, because the same power structures are still in place, and it's not in their best interests to change. — Terry Tempest Williams

Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.'
That's a rather broad idea,' I remarked.
One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature,' he answered. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Every deal can be closed. Every prospect can become a buyer. Every no can turn into a yes. In any market. In any economy. There is always an angle. There is always another attempt. There is no law against how much you can prospect, or how many times you can try to close a deal. There are more than enough ideas and millions of resources and billions of people out there to make any dream that you want, a reality. The only mental chain that will ever imprison you in a life of scarcity, is a belief that there is not enough, or that there is not a way to make what you want possible.

This chapter is going to awaken and stir up a monster of influence and achievement inside you. This monster works by being totally aware of all the resources that you have at your disposal, and not being afraid to any means to influence. "

Excerpt From: "Unlimited Influence: Sell Any Idea One On One - Chapter: Gun To Your Head — Jonathan DeCollibus

Human beings are accustomed to think of intellect as the power of having and controlling ideas and of ability to learn as synonymous with ability to have ideas. But learning by having ideas is really one of the rare and isolated events in nature. — Edward Thorndike

Nothing opens up the mind and the heart like books do, and so they have the power to change the whole world. That's why the are burning books, Ava. To stop us thinking, and feeling, and imagining ... — Kate Forsyth

I'm not in power, but my ideas are in power. And my ideas will prevail. — Ehud Olmert

Pop culture shapes our ideas of what is normal and what our dreams can be and what our roles are. Politics, of course, decides how the power and the money in the country is distributed. Both are equally important, and each affects the other. — Gloria Steinem

One idea lights a thousand candles. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

An unthinkable thought is not one that hasn't occurred to somebody, nor is it a thought that somebody considers to be wrong. An unthinkable thought threatens a person's entire existence and is therefore subversive and consequently can be thought of and has been thought of, but has been pushed out of the mind's currency and subsumed into its margins where it festers. Dark nights of the soul are lit by inconceivable ideas. Any story may draw its source from the power of an unthinkable thought. — Charles Baxter

The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made. — John Locke

Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the truth is, this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding. And to prevent the least hope of amendment, a king is ever surrounded by a crowd of infamous flatterers, who find their account in keeping him from the least light of reason, till all ideas of rectitude and justice are utterly erased from his mind. — Edmund Burke

If by 'intellectual' you mean people who are a special class who are in the business of imposing thoughts and forming ideas for people in power, and telling people what they should believe ... they're really more a kind of secular priesthood, whose task it is to uphold the doctrinal truths of the society. And the population SHOULD be anti-intellectual in that repect. — Noam Chomsky

Ideas are the greatest and most crucially practical power on earth. — Ayn Rand

What are called opinions "on the left" and "on the right" in the media represent only a limited spectrum of debate, which reflects the range of needs of private power - but there's essentially nothing beyond those "acceptable" positions. So what the media do, in effect, is to take the set of assumptions which express the basic ideas of the propaganda system, whether about the Cold War or the economic system or the "national interest" and so on, and then present a range of debate within that framework - so the debate only enhances the strength of the assumptions, ingraining them in people's minds as the entire possible spectrum of opinion that there is. — Noam Chomsky

We have taken Herodotus as an interesting specimen of what we have called the free intelligence of mankind. Now here we are dealing with a similar overflow of moral ideas into the general community. The Hebrew prophets, and the steady expansion of their ideas towards one God in all the world, is a parallel development of the free conscience of mankind. From this time onward there runs through human thought, now weakly and obscurely, now gathering power, the idea of one rule in the world, and of a promise and possibility of an active and splendid peace and happiness in human affairs. From being a temple religion of the old type, the Jewish religion becomes, to a large extent, a prophetic and creative religion of a new type. Prophet succeeds prophet. — H.G.Wells

We cannot control the way people interpret our ideas or thoughts, but we can control the words and tones we choose to convey them. Peace is built on understanding, and wars are built on misunderstandings. Never underestimate the power of a single word, and never recklessly throw around words. One wrong word, or misinterpreted word, can change the meaning of an entire sentence - and even start a war. And one right word, or one kind word, can grant you the heavens and open doors. — Suzy Kassem

In pursuit of his ends, Jefferson sought, acquired, and wielded power, which is the bending of the world to one's will, the remaking of reality in one's own image.33 Our greatest leaders are neither dreamers nor dictators: They are, like Jefferson, those who articulate national aspirations yet master the mechanics of influence and know when to depart from dogma. Jefferson had a remarkable capacity to marshal ideas and to move men, to balance the inspirational and the pragmatic. To realize his vision, he compromised and improvised. The willingness to do what he needed to do in a given moment makes him an elusive historical figure. — Jon Meacham

The record of anarchist ideas, and even more, of the inspiring struggles of people who have sought to liberate themselves from oppression and domination, must be treasured and preserved, not as means of freezing thought and conception in some new mold but as basis for understanding of the social reality and committed work to change it. There is no reason to suppose that history is at an end, that the current structures of authority and domination are graven in stone. It would also be great error to underestimate the power of social forces that will fight to maintain power and privilege. — Noam Chomsky

We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage ... Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark. But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost. — Friedrich Hayek

In the savage horde the most vagabond, as well as in the most civilized nations of Europe, man is only what he is made to be by external circumstances; he is necessarily elevated by his equals; he contracts from them his habits and his wants; his ideas are no longer his own; he enjoys, from the enviable prerogative of his species, a capacity of developing his understanding bu the power of initiation, and the influence of society. — Jean Marc Gaspard Itard

One's relationship with money is lifelong, it colors one's sense of identity, it shapes one's attitude to other people, it connects and splits generations; money is the arena in which greed and generosity are played out, in which wisdom is exercised and folly committed. Freedom, desire, power, status, work, possession: these huge ideas that rule life are enacted, almost always, in and around money. — John Armstrong

Monod proposed an analogy: Just as the biosphere stands above the world of nonliving matter, so an "abstract kingdom" rises above the biosphere. The denizens of this kingdom? Ideas. Ideas have retained some of the properties of organisms. Like them, they tend to perpetuate their structure and to breed; they too can fuse, recombine, segregate their content; indeed they too can evolve, and in this evolution selection must surely play an important role. Ideas have "spreading power," he noted - "infectivity, as it were" - and some more than others. An example of an infectious idea might be a religious ideology that gains sway over a large group of people. The American neurophysiologist Roger Sperry had put forward a similar notion several years earlier, arguing that ideas are "just as real" as the neurons they inhabit. Ideas have power, he said. — James Gleick

Men in general are too material and do not make enough human contacts. If we search for the fundamentals which actually motivate us we will find that they come under four headings: love, money, adventure and religion. It is to some of them that we always owe that big urge which pushes us onward. Men who crush these impulses and settle down to everyday routine are bound to sink into mediocrity. No man is a complete unit of himself; he needs the contact, the stimulus and the driving power which is generated by his contact with other men, their ideas, and constantly changing scenes. — Edward S. Jordan

Change depends on people knowing the truth. Change depends on people speaking that truth out loud. That's what movements do. Movements educate people to the truth. They pass along information and ideas that many others do not know, and they cause them to ask questions, to challenge their own long-held beliefs ... Movements are the way ordinary people get more freedom and justice. Movements are how we keep a check on power and those who abuse it. — Unita Blackwell

The supreme God that we serve has the final say in all matters. There is no higher law and there is no greater power. Hebrews 6:13 states, "He could swear by none greater, so He swore by himself." Since God has a supreme status, When the ideas of man conflict with the laws of God, the ideas of man are doomed. When the concepts of false teachings purvey useless information, they may flounder and flop around on the canvass of human curiosity for some time, but when they rear their ugly head against God's law they are on a collision course with extinction. ~ From the book Supremacy Clause by Pastor Myers — David Myers

Our minds are a battle ground between good and bad ideas; we are whatever side wins the battle — Bangambiki Habyarimana

The necessity for struggle is one of the clever devices through which nature forces individuals to expand, develop, progress, and become strong through resistance ... We are forced to recognize that this great universal necessity for struggle must have a definite and useful purpose. That purpose is to force the individual to sharpen his wits, arouse his enthusiasm, build up his spirit of faith, gain definiteness of purpose, develop his power of will, and inspire his faculty of imagination to give him new uses for old ideas and concepts ... — Napoleon Hill

Personally, I am far from convinced that the British system is suited to India. The parliamentary democracy we have adopted involves the British perversity of electing a legislature to form an executive: this has created a unique breed of legislator, largely unqualified to legislate, who has sought election only in order to wield (or influence) executive power. It has produced governments obliged to focus more on politics than on policy or performance. It has distorted the voting preferences of an electorate that knows which individuals it wants but not necessarily which policies. It has spawned parties that are shifting alliances of individual interests rather than the vehicles of coherent sets of ideas. It has forced governments to concentrate less on governing than on staying in office, and obliged them to cater to the lowest common denominator of their coalitions. It is time for a change. Pluralist — Shashi Tharoor

Liberty and Freedom are complex concepts. They go back to religious ideas of Free Will and are related to the Ruler Mystique implicit in absolute monarchs. Without absolute monarchs patterned after the Old Gods and ruling by the grace of a belief in religious indulgence, Liberty and Freedom would never have gained their present meaning. These ideals owe their very existence to past examples of oppression. And the forces that maintain such ideas will erode unless renewed by dramatic teaching or new oppressions. This is the most basic key to my life. — Frank Herbert

If all that you see, do, measure and discover is the will of a deity, then ideas can never be proven wrong, you have no predictive power, and you are at a loss to understand the principles behind most of the fundamental interconnections of nature. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

When you have the money- and "you" are a big, economically and culturally vital nation- you get more than just a higher standard of living for your citizens. You get power and influence, and a much-enhanced ability to act out. When the money drains out, you can maintain the edge in living standards of your citizens for a considerable time (as long as others are willing to hold your growing debt and pile interest payments on top). But you lose power, especially the power to ignore others, quite quickly, though hopefully, in quiet, nonconfrontational ways.And you lose influence- the ability to have your wishes, ideas, and folkways willingly accepted, eagerly copied, and absorbed into daily life by others. — Stephen S. Cohen

There are few ideas in the world of thought which contain so much spiritual power as the idea of the Sabbath. Aeons hence, when of many of our cherished theories only shreds will remain, that cosmic tapestry will continue to shine. — Abraham Joshua Heschel

Somehow super power and hero are so synonymous that they get combined into one word, 'superhero,' whereas I'm kind of more interested in separating those two ideas out. You have characters with super powers who may or may not be heroic, because human beings aren't all heroic. I tend to be drawn to antiheros. — Doug Liman

Our acquaintances - not our friends - are our greatest source of new ideas and information. the internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency. — Malcolm Gladwell

A file-sharing service and a hedge fund are essentially the same things. In both cases, there's this idea that whoever has the biggest computer can analyze everyone else to their advantage and concentrate wealth and power. It's shrinking the overall economy. I think it's the mistake of our age. — Jaron Lanier

But the thing about good ideas is that they grow other ideas. — Patrick Ness

We are told to remember the idea and not the man. Because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten. But 400 years later, an idea can still change the world. I have witnessed firsthand the power of ideas. I've seen people kill in the name of them. But you cannot kiss an idea ... cannot touch it or hold it.
Ideas do not bleed. They do not feel pain. They do not love. And it is not an idea that I miss. It is a man.
A man that made me remember the 5th of November. A man that I will never forget. — Alan Moore

Free speech rights means that government officials are barred from creating lists of approved and disapproved political ideas and then using the power of the state to enforce those preferences. — Glenn Greenwald

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country ... We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society ... In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind. — Edward L. Bernays

Ideas are not intellectuals' toys: ideas have consequences, for good and for ill, in what even intellectuals sometimes call "the real world". — George Weigel

When simplicity of character and the sovereignty of ideas is broken up by the prevalence of secondary desires, the desire of riches, of pleasure, of power, and of praise, - and duplicity and falsehood take place of simplicity and truth, the power over nature as an interpreter of the will, is in a degree lost; new imagery ceases to be created, and old words are perverted to stand for things which are not; a paper currency is employed, when there is no bullion in the vaults. In — Ralph Waldo Emerson

How much are you worth?
I have no idea. How much do you want?
Naw.I just want to know what you're worth. Over ten million?
Oh, my, yes.
Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What can you buy that you can't already afford?
The future, Mr. Gittes! The future! — Robert Towne

Join the mob or go for what you want. Give yourself plenty of quiet time alone in order to get in touch with who you are ... Focus power of thought. Remind yourself that the world is yours for the asking. The non-risker does not grow, you just get older. When you have decided which ideas, beliefs, relationships, and situations no longer work for you, it is time to release them. Let go of negative thoughts - view them as a flight of birds crossing your path. See them fly into view and continue on their way.' - from Joan Root's diary — Mark Seal

Maybe you have already been writing, but never considered a book before. What you have contributed to websites, discussion groups, blogs and membership communities can lead to books. These are great places to flesh out ideas, get reader feedback, and sometimes even catch the attention of an agent, publisher or larger audience. If anything, a well branded presence on the internet positions you in a way where you have the opportunity to become the authority or expert. Do not let any of what you have written online go to waste. Make files and collect all of your information because you may have enough content already written to fill two books! — Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

Allegory and metaphor work by linking together two normally unconnected ideas in order to startle the reader into seeing something they thought they knew in a different light. Strictly speaking metaphors aren't coincidences, as they are man-made, but they work the same trick: fusing unrelated entities to power a revelation. — Martin Plimmer

Pain is surprising; we cannot understand why we have been abandoned in love ... why we are unable to sleep at night ... Identifying reasons for such discomforts does not spectacularly absolve us of pain, but it may form the principal basis of a recovery. While assuring us that we are not uniquely cursed, understanding grants us a sense of the boundaries to, and bitter logic behind, our suffering. 'Griefs, at the moment when they change into ideas, lose some of their power to injure our heart.' - Proust — Alain De Botton

Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain. We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them. We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house. — W. Somerset Maugham

The bold code of the transhumanist will rise. That's an inevitable, undeniable fact. It's embedded in the undemocratic nature of technology and our own teleological evolutionary advancment. It is the future. We are the future like it or not. And it needs to molded, guided, and handled correctly by the strength and wisdom of transhumanist scientists with their nations and resources standing behind them, facilitating them. It needs to be supported in a way that we can make a successful transition into it, and not sacrifice ourselves - either by its overwhelming power or by a fear of harnessing that power. You need to put your resources into the technology. Into our education system. Into our universities, industries, and ideas. Into the strongest of our society. Into the brightest of our society. Into the best of our society So that we can attain the future. — Zoltan Istvan