ideas

If you want to have clean ideas, change them as often as your shirt.

Once a day, especially in the early years of life and study, call yourselves to an account what new ideas, what new proposition or truth you have gained, what further confirmation of known truths, and what advances you have made in any part of knowledge.

Whenever ideas fail, men invent words.

Strong men have sound ideas and the force to make these ideas effective.

Not to engage in the pursuit of ideas is to live like ants instead of like men.

Men's ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.

Poetry is really a way of sharing feelings and ideas.

You don't make a poem with ideas, but with words.

A thousand years ago, everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, they knew the Earth was flat. Fifteen minutes ago, you knew we humans were alone on it. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.

I think poetry is able to say things in such a small, perfect way that are so hard to say. I think it's a perfect medium for expressing difficult ideas and concepts and feelings. It's one of my great loves.

In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

We do not learn for the benefit of anyone, we learn to unlearn ignorance.

If Obama came by his liberalism in the faculty lounge, then sure, he can see it hasn't worked, and he can modify it. But if Obama got his formative ideas when he was very young, and if they are the result of his traumatic relationship with his father, then they are built into his psyche.

The fashion industry now has a direct relationship with its customers. Thanks to things like Twitter, ideas can be shared and circulated.

Creativity is paradoxical. To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as information incubates, must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire success but embrace failure, must be persistent but not stubborn, and must listen to experts but know how to disregard them.", December 6, 2011)]

A lot of people over time have had this kind of pattern in their relationship with Bill Clinton. You first meet him and you're overwhelmed by his talent. He's so energetic and articulate and full of ideas and he calls himself a congenital optimist and that optimism is contagious.

There are so many people I know who could be the greatest film-maker but who will never get the chance to make a movie it's all about what somebody is going to make back. There are not a lot of romantic ideas about making movies anymore.