Rien n'est plus dangereux qu'une ide¤  e, quand on n'a qu'une ide¤  e. Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you have only one idea.

-Alain (EŁ  mile-Auguste Chartier)
  Propos sur la religion, no.74.

   Whatever is immediately perceived is an idea: and can any idea exist out of the mind?

-Berkeley, George
  Three Dialogues between Hylas  And Philonous, first dialogue.

Hang your idea on a peg that all can read.

-Brisbane, Arthur
c.1907  Quoted in Oliver Carlson Brisbane: a Candid Biography (1937), ch.7.

Were we to choose our leaders on the basis of their reading experience and not their political programs, there would be much less grief on earth. I believeönot empirically, alas, but only theoreticallyöthat for someone who has read a lot of Dickens to shoot his like in the name of an idea is harder than for someone who has read no Dickens.

-Brodsky, Ioseph
  Nobel prize acceptance speech.

L'absurde est la notion essentielle et la premie'  re ve¤  rite¤  . The absurd is the fundamental idea and the first truth.

-Camus, Albert
  Le Mythe de Sisyphe ( The Myth of Sisyphus,1955).

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter nosesthanourselves, isnot a pretty thing when you look into it too much.What redeems it is an idea only.

-Korzeniowski
  Heart of Darkness, pt.1 (first published in Blackwood's Magazine, collected inYouth:  A Narrative, and Two Other Stories, 1902).

In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.

-Darwin, Sir Francis
  'Francis Galton', in Eugenics Review, vol.6, issue1,  Apr.

People in nutrition do get the idea that theyare going to live to be150. And they never do.

-Davis, Adelle
  Quoted in DanielYergin's'Supernutritionist', NewYork Times magazine, 20 May.

What makes men of genius, or rather, what they make, is not new ideas, it is that ideaöpossessing themöthat what has been said has still not been said enough.

-Delacroix, (Ferdinand Victor) Euge'  ne
  The Journal of Euge'  ne Delacroix (translated by W Pach, 1948), entry for15 May.

Agnoscam fieri non posse ut existam talis naturae qualis sum, nempe ideam Dei in me habens, nisi revera Deus etiam existeret, Deus, inquam, ille idem cujus idea in me est. I could not possibly exist with the nature I actually have, that is, one endowed with the idea of God, unless there really is a God; the very God, I mean, of whom I have an idea.

-Descartes, Rene¤
Meditationes, 3rd meditation (translated by G E M Anscombe and Peter Geach)

Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the shadow.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  'The Hollow Men'.

We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover up all the tracks, to not worryabout the blind alleys or describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to do the work.

-Feynman, Richard P(hillips)
  Nobel lecture.

You know how it always is, every new idea, it takes a generation or two until it becomes obvious that there's no real problem. I cannot define the real problem, therefore I suspect there's no real problem, but I'm not sure there's no real problem.

-Feynman, Richard P(hillips)
  Explaining his feelings on quantum mechanics. In the International Journal of  Theoretical Physics, vol.21.

No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.

-Fitzgerald, F(rancis) Scott Key
Note Books, E, in Edmund Wilson (ed)  The Crack-Up (1945).

L'Ide¤  e seule est e¤  ternelle et ne¤  cessaire. The idea alone is eternal and necessary.

-Flaubert, Gustave
  Letter to Mme Louise Colet, 9  Aug.

Death destroys a man: the idea of death saves him. 331

-Forster, E(dward) M(organ)
  Howards End, ch.27.

I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my countryand betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.

-Forster, E(dward) M(organ)
Two Cheers for Democracy,'What I Believe'.

If you believe in the maternal instinct and fail at mother love, you fail as a woman. It is a controlling idea that holds us in an iron grip.

-Friday, Nancy
  My Mother, My Self, ch.1.

It is onlya mild exaggeration to say that now no one wants Fine Artists, except Fine Artists, and that neither they nor anyone else have the slightest idea what they should be doing, or for whom they should be doing it.

-Fuller, Peter
Beyond the Crisis in  Art.

The charge that an idea is radical, impractical, or long- haired is met by showing that a prominent businessman has favored it†an additional tactic in this strategy of defense†is to assert that Winston Churchill once sponsored the particular idea. If one is challenged, a sufficiently careful investigation will show that he did.

-Galbraith,John Kenneth
  Economics and the Art of Controversy.