Some pacifists have carried the sound idea of the prime importance of security too far, to the point of declaring that any consideration of disarmament is superfluous and pointless as long as eternal peace has not been attained.
Each social formation, through each of its material activities, exerts its influence upon the civic whole; and each of its ideas and ideals wins also its place and power.
I believe in the power of ideas, I believe in the power of books, but you have to give them time.
What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.
Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.
I think that the job of poetry, its political job, is to refresh the idea of justice, which is going dead in us all the time.
If you grow up in a very strong religion like Catholicism you certainly cultivate in yourself a certain taste for the intensity of ideas.
There's no way that scientists can ever rule out religion, or even have anything significant to say about the abstract idea of a divine creator.
The very idea that we get a moral compass from religion is horrible. Not only should we not get our moral compass from religion, as a matter of fact we don't.
I was very interested in the relationship between the man who speaks and the woman who listens. I was drawn to the idea that the relationship between a man and a woman can be something like a war itself, very cruel and violent.
There's something about the superheroes and the idea behind their relationship with humans, whether it's a metaphor for the better part of ourselves, or the more flawed part of ourselves. So it seems to really be our own pop-culture version of Greek ...
Look, you've got a generation of people coming along who are going to form their own new relationship with the idea of supporting the causes that they care about or changing the world. And these people are not going to do it the way our parents do it...
I talk to my friends and, you know, they all seem to get relationships that aren't right. You kind of want someone who is not at your beck and call but loves the idea of being in a relationship and what that entails.
The whole idea of genre and categorising films is a critic's construct. For me, I just try and make stories and see where they go, but there's nothing wrong with horror; there's nothing wrong with romantic comedies.
I'm better with my hands, and I always loved the slightly romantic idea of starting with bits of wood and being able to create something to sit on, to eat from, to store your clothes in.
It's not that I don't believe in creativity and innovation and new ideas, and the creativity that comes with fashion, which I really respect. But one of my biggest concerns is just how cheap we expect everything to be.
The process of science is difficult and challenging. It involves always being aware that your ideas might be right or they might be wrong. I think it's that kind of balance that makes science so interesting.
Though women are no longer barred from university laboratories and scientific societies, the idea that they are innately less suited to mathematical science is deeply ingrained in our cultural genes.
Some ideas you have to chew on, then roll them around a lot, play with them before you can turn them into funky science fiction.
To the indefinite, uncertain mind of the American radical the most contradictory ideas and methods are possible. The result is a sad chaos in the radical movement, a sort of intellectual hash, which has neither taste nor character.
Generally, when a record label suggests album ideas for you, you smile politely, and then proceed to shoot it down, because it's never what you as an artist feel is right for you.
