Old Ideas Quotes

• It's not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas.

  Edwin Land

  Business, Ideas, Entrepreneur

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• The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Life, Inspiring

  193 Copy quote

• I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

  John Cage

  Inspirational, Motivational, Change

  "Conversing with Cage". Book by Richard Kostelanetz, 1988.

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• You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Positive, Art

  "Conversations with Maya Angelou". Book by Jeffrey M. Elliot, 1989.

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  The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Inspirational, Change, Lying

  "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money". Book by John Maynard Keynes (Preface), 1936.

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• If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old

  Peter Drucker

  Inspiring, Business, Creativity

  296 Copy quote

• The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things-ancient history, nineteenth century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, hog futures. Because he never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen six minutes later, or six months, or six years. But he has faith that it will happen.

  Carl Ally

  Creativity, Bad Ass, Ideas

  43 Copy quote

• There is no such thing as a new idea. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope.

  Mark Twain

  Ideas, Kaleidoscope, New Ideas

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.9071, Delphi Classics

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• We don't need men with new ideas as much as we need men who will put energy behind the old ideas.

  William Feather

  Men, Ideas, Energy

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• Fighting is not the best way to win an argument. If carried to its ultimate conclusions, the old idea of "an eye for an eye" eventually ends in making everybody blind.

  Sterling W Sill

  Eye, Fighting, Winning

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• Old ideas are continually being slain by new facts. There is nothing stable in the conclusions of the mind, and it is impossible that there ever should be unless we hold that the universe is made to the measure of the human mind, an assumption for which nothing in the past gives any warrant.

  Edith Hamilton

  Past, Ideas, Giving

  5 Copy quote

• The difference between writing a story and simply relating past events is that a story, in order to be acceptable, must have shape and meaning. It is the old idea that art is the bringing of order out of chaos.

  Katherine Paterson

  Art, Writing, Past

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• Critics of the Wall Street protesters claim that they have old ideas, nothing new, and they're never going to work. Wait a minute., that sounds like this show.

  David Letterman

  Wall, Ideas, Waiting

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• Permission from the government is an expensive commodity. New ideas rarely have this kind of support. Old ideas often have deep legislative connections to defend them against the new.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Government, Ideas, Support

  Lawrence Lessig (2002). “The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World”, p.76, Vintage

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• The discovery of radioactivity created a momentary chaos in chemistry and physics; but it soon led to a fuller interpretation of the old ideas. It dispersed many difficulties, harmonized many discords, and yea, more! It shewed the substance of Universe as a simplicity of Light and Life, manners to compose atoms, themselves capable of deeper self-realization through fresh complexities and organizations, each with its own peculiar powers and pleasures, each pursuing its path through the world where all things are possible.

  Aleister Crowley

  Organization, Ideas, Light

  "Magick Book IV: Liber ABA". Book by Aleister Crowley. Appendix VI: A few principal rituals - Liber Reguli, 1936.

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• Just as the line of astronomical thinkers from Copernicus to Newton had destroyed the old astronomy, in which the earth was the center, and the Almighty sitting above the firmament the agent in moving the heavenly bodies about it with his own hands, so now a race of biological thinkers had destroyed the old idea of a Creator minutely contriving and fashioning all animals to suit the needs and purposes of man.

  Andrew Dickson White

  Moving, Animal, Men

  Andrew Dickson White (2012). “A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom: From Creation to the Victory of Scientific and Literary Methods”, p.49, Transaction Publishers

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• A genuine invention in the realm of ideas must first emerge as an abstruse and even partial concept? At first blusha new idea appearstobe verycloseto insanity because to be new it must reverse important basic beliefs and assumptions which, in turn, have been institutionalized and are administered by one or another kind of priesthood with a vested interest in an old idea.

  Arthur Miller

  Ideas, Insanity, Important

  1958 The Collected Plays,'Introduction, II'.

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• When people speak of ideas that revolutionize society, they do but express the fact that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.

  Karl Marx

  Ideas, People, Pace

  Karl Marx, David McLellan (2000). “Karl Marx: Selected Writings”, p.260, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Orthodoxy: That peculiar condition where the patient can neither eliminate an old idea nor absorb a new one.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Ideas, Atheism, Peculiar

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• Sometimes, to pursue a new idea, the artist must forfeit his deposit on an old idea.

  Robert Breault

  Art, Ideas, Sometimes

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• I started to write in 2001. I wrote the books for the fun of it. It was an old idea I had had since the nineties.

  Steig Larsson

  Fun, Book, Writing

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• New ideas should confront old ideas. We must refer to the example of Europe. People have fought to make Europe what it is today. Freedom is not something that is served up on a plate.

  Tahar Ben Jelloun

  Europe, Ideas, People

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• It's the old idea that the process of evolution is some push in the direction of greater complexity--in particular greater intellectual complexity. In one twig of the tree of life, namely ours, having a big brain happened to have advantages. But that's just what worked for a particular species of primate 5 to 7 million years ago.

  Steven Pinker

  Ideas, Years, Tree

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• The greatest difficulty in the world is not for people to accept new ideas, but to make them forget old ideas.

  Tom Peters

  Ideas, People, World

  Tom Peters (2010). “The Circle of Innovation: You Can't Shrink Your Way to Greatness”, p.78, Vintage

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• On tight money: It reflects a reversion to the old idea that the tree can be fertilized at the top instead of at the bottom - the old trickle-down theory.

  Harry S. Truman

  Ideas, Tree, Theory

  Harry S. Truman, Ralph Keyes (1995). “Wit and wisdom of Harry Truman”, Harpercollins

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