Famous Quotes & Sayings

Iain Duncan Smith

We have to challenge the whole idea that it's acceptable for a society like Britain to have such a significant number of people who do not work one day of the week and don't have any possibility of improving the quality of their lives.

Ian Anderson

I kind of like the idea of living a rather ordinary life as a shopkeeper, and I examine that possibility as one of the outcomes of the young Gerald Bostock growing older.

Howard Zinn

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

That whole idea of threats to national security is a very interesting one. The phrase is very useful for the government to try to encompass the citizenry in the same box as the government is in. To say, "We're all in this together. It threatens all of us."

Howard Hughes

Do the impossible, because almost everyone has told me my ideas are merely fantasies.

Howard Hodgkin

Eventually, a collection ceases to be a personal indulgence and assumes its own identity. In fact, it becomes a thing in its own right - rather like Frankenstein's monster.

Hannah Arendt

Ideas, as distinguished from events, are never unprecedented.

Gottfried Leibniz

If you have a clear idea of a soul, you will have a clear idea of a form; for it is of the same genus, though a different species.

Gottfried Leibniz

I hold that the mark of a genuine idea is that its possibility can be proved, either a priori by conceiving its cause or reason, or a posteriori when experience teaches us that it is in fact in nature.

Gottfried Leibniz

When a truth is necessary, the reason for it can be found by analysis, that is, by resolving it into simpler ideas and truths until the primary ones are reached. It is this way that in mathematics speculative theorems and practical canons are reduced by analysis to definitions, axioms and postulates.

Gottfried Leibniz

Now, as there is an infinity of possible universes in the Ideas of God, and as only one of them can exist, there must be a sufficient reason for God's choice, which determines him toward one rather than another. And this reason can be found only in the fitness, or the degrees of perfection, that these worlds contain, since each possible thing has the right to claim existence in proportion to the perfection it involves.

Gore Vidal

It is ironic that a nation that has never experienced a coup d'etat should be so obsessed with the idea of conspiracy.

Gerhard Richter

It is a danger to wait around for an idea to occur to you. You have to find the idea.

Harville Hendrix

When we meet an Imago match, that chemical reaction occurs, and love ignites. All other bets, all other ideas about what we want in a mate, are off. We feel alive and whole, confident that we have met the person who will make everything all right.

Harold Ramis

I'd rather do comedies that strike at some bigger ideas.

Jamaica Kincaid

I'll read anything. In fact, I'll read while I'm doing other things, which is not a good idea.

Jacques Derrida

Each time this identity announces itself, someone or something cries: Look out for the trap, youre caught. Take off, get free, disengage yourself.

Jacques Barzun

Above all, do not talk yourself out of good ideas by trying to expound them at haphazard meetings.

Jack White

There aren't that many things left that haven't already been done, especially with music. I'm interested in ideas that can shake us all up.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

No idea holds greater sway in the minds of educated Americans that the belief that it is possible to democratize governments anytime and anywhere under any circumstances .

Jeanne Moreau

I don't like the idea of separating life and work. That notion seems dated and a bit alien to me.

Jeanne Moreau

If you get trapped in the idea that what is most important is what image of yourself you're giving to the world, you're on a dangerous path.

Jean-Francois Cope

If you meet a woman in a burqa, she can't reply to your smile. It's a denial of identity.

Jean Dubuffet

What interests me about thoughts is not the moment when it crystallises into formal ideas but its earlier stages.

Jean Monnet

Premature ideas do not exist, one must bide one's time until the right moment comes along.

Jean-Marie Messier

I was a very early believer in the idea of convergence.

Gloria Feldt

Your vision, ideas and plans have the power to shape the future, but not if you keep them to yourself.

Gloria Allred

Instead of receiving the help that she had hoped for, Mr. Cain instead decided to provide her with his idea of a stimulus package.

Georgia O'Keeffe

I realized that I had things in my head not like what I had been taught - not like what I had seen - shapes and ideas so familiar to me that it hadn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to stop painting, to put away everything I had done, and to start to say the things that were my own.

Georgia O'Keeffe

I have a single track mind. I work on an idea for a long time. It's like getting acquainted with a person, and I don't get acquainted easily.

Gerald R. Ford

So much of what passes for public life consists of little more than candidates without ideas, hiring consultants without conviction, to stage campaigns without content. The result, increasingly, is elections without voters.

Jim Holt

You have to have a temperamental attraction to dangerous ideas...

Jim DeMint

Frankly, if independents and Democrats want to work with us on conservative ideas, I can do that better at Heritage than as a partisan inside.