And, if you'll investigate the history of science, my dear boy, I think you'll find that most of the really big ideas have come from intelligent playfulness. All the sober, thin-lipped concentration is really just a matter of tidying up around the fr...
Language itself is so value-laden as to render value-neutrality almost impossible. Growing up in England I was introduced to the American Revolution by a 'footnote' to colonial history about the 'revolt' of the American colonies. Word choice and the ...
Research has found that in most companies managers who get promoted rapidly spend most of their time networking and politicking, while their more effective colleagues spent their time building their units and developing their people.
Plug into the anti-obvious power of the rebel. Or get those opposing minds to plug into your purpose, to solve your problem, to reimagine your process.
A university training is the great ordinary means to a great but ordinary end; it aims at raising the intellectual tone of society…It is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing...
I always had plenty of ideas. I didn’t exactly have them. They grew—little by little, a half an idea at a time. First, part of a phrase and then a person to go with it. After a person, then a little corner of a place for the person to be in.
Malander had an idea and was trying to work it out, but it would take him time. Sometimes people never saw things clearly until it was too late and they no longer had the strength to start again. Or else they forgot their idea along the way and didn'...
To be yourself requires extraordinary intelligence. You are blessed with that intelligence; nobody need give it to you; nobody can take it away from you. He who lets that express itself in its own way is a "Natural Man".
For most of human history people owned other people. Then, only a hundred and fifty years ago, our ancestors figured out that was a bad idea. One day we’ll figure out, or our descendants will figure out, that people owning land they don’t live on...
If two parties with two sets of bad ideas cooperate, the result is not good policy, but policy that is extremely bad. What we really need are correct economic and politcal ideas, regardless of the party that pushes them.
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I ca...
Just in case you get any ideas, know that I’ll be sleeping with a can of Mace in one hand and pepper spray in the other.” - Katie Jorlan's expression turned mocking. “Just in case you get any ideas, know that I’ll be sleeping with a feather i...
best practices are useful reference points, but they must come with a warning label : The more you rely on external intelligence, the less you will value an internal idea. And this is the age of the idea
Legendary innovators like Franklin, Snow, and Darwin all possess some common intellectual qualities—a certain quickness of mind, unbounded curiosity—but they also share one other defining attribute. They have a lot of hobbies.
Berners-Lee was supremely lucky in the work environment he had settled into, the Swiss particle physics lab CERN. It took him ten years to nurture his slow hunch about a hypertext information platform.
We have entered a time when a writer's first idea is his best idea, when the first thing a reporter hears is the first thing that she reports. We live in a time now when we have seen major television networks take video off of YouTube and broadcast i...
To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant—inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write.
To make our communications more effective, we need to shift our thinking from "What information do I need to convey?" to "What questions do I want my audience to ask?
A brilliant idea is like a baby in a mothers womb. You need to bring it out in the world, nurture it, feed it, grow it, till it becomes big enough to take care of itself. If you leave it at the stage of an idea itself, it is as good as non existent.
We walked up and down in the snow, I on skis and she on foot ( said and proved that could get along just as fast that way), and gradually the idea took shape that this was no chipping or cracking of the nucleus but rather a process to be explained by...
No-one really feels self-confident deep down because it's an artificial idea. Really, people aren't that worried about what you're doing or what you're saying, so you can drift around the world relatively anonymously: you must not feel persecuted and...
