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Many ideas will faint and disappear at the slightest breeze, but there
are some which will withstand a hurricane. Richard Dawkins called them
‘memes’. Another nice interpretation is ‘thought viruses’ that implant
themselves in people’s minds and spread with each retelling.
See also
fragility*, ideas*, illumination, potential, understanding
Quotes
‘You can imprison a man, but not an idea. You can exile a man, but not an
idea. You can kill a man, but not an idea.’
— Benazir Bhutto
‘There is no adequate defence, except stupidity, against the impact of a new
idea.’
— P. W. Bridgman
‘If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon or make a better
mouse-trap than his neighbour, though he builds his house in the woods the world
will make a beaten path to his door.’
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
‘An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.’
— Victor Hugo
‘A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have
endurance without death.’
— John Fitzgerald Kennedy
‘You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea: you can not put an idea up
against a barracks-square wall and riddle it with bullets: you cannot confine it
in the strongest prison cell that your slaves could ever build.’
— Sean O’Casey
‘Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns,
why should we let them have ideas?’
— Josef Stalin
‘Ideas are the factors that lift civilization. They create revolutions. There
is more dynamite in an idea than in many bombs.’
— John H. Vincent
‘An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.’
— Oscar Wilde
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