"Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you have only one idea." - Alain, Libres-propos

"Every man with an idea has at least two or three followers." - Brooks Atkinson, Once Around the Sun

"One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea." - Walter Bagehot, Physics and Politics

"A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man's brow." - Charles Brower

"A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the right person's brow." - Charles Brower

"The wise only possess ideas . . . the greater part of mankind are possessed by them." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Defoe

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up, ed. Edmund Wilson

"To die for an idea is to set a rather high price upon conjecture." - Anatole France

"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all." - ELBERT HUBBARD, Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams

"One can resist the invasion of armies; one cannot resist the invasion of ideas." - VICTOR HUGO, Histoire d'un crime

"Often quoted in forms that correspond only loosely to Hugo's original words, for example: No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come. An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of a revelation." - WILLIAM JAMES, The Varieties of Religious Experience

"An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it." - DON MARQUIS, in New York Sun

"General notions are generally wrong." - LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU, letter (to her husband, 1710)

"For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned." - GEORGE SANTAYANA, Winds of Doctrine

"Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game." - Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832)

"The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it." - Medawar, P. B.

"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." - Orwell, George [pseudonym of Eric Blair] (1903-1950) from '1984'

"Ideas do have consequences and all argument is philosophical. You may try to avoid or hide it, but your line of thinking on any issue is a result of the basic philosophy which you hold." - Otto, John G. [Quote Archivist] 18 July 1994