Big Ideas Quotes - Page 4

If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science fiction writers are its court jesters. We are Wise Fools who can leap, caper, utter prophecies, and scratch ourselves in public. We can play with Big Ideas because the garish motley of our pulp origins make us seem harmless.

Bruce Sterling

Wise, Play, Ideas

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My novels are high concept. I guess big ideas interest me more than, say, the minutiae of domestic life.

Scarlett Thomas

Ideas, Bigs, Minutiae

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The big ideas always come in flashes. I don't really craft stories that much. I genuinely don't know where these people come from and I've often wondered if writing is just a socially acceptable form of madness.

Taiye Selasi

Writing, Ideas, People

"Taiye Selasi: 'I'm very willing to follow my imagination'". Interview with Tim Lewis, www.theguardian.com. March 22, 2013.

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In really good companies, you have to lead. You have to come up with big ideas and express them forcefully. I have always been encouraged -- or sometimes forced -- to confront the very natural fear of being wrong. I was constantly pushed to find out what I really thought and then to speak up. Over time, I came to see that waiting to discover which way the wind was blowing is an excellent way to learn how to be a follower.

Roger Enrico

Inspirational, Leadership, Wind

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I like to be right. I try not to miss the big ideas, forget the little ones, and try to get them right. End of job description.

Jeremy Grantham

Jobs, Ideas, Missing

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I write from my knowledge not my lack, from my strength not my weakness. I am not interested if anyone knows whether or not I am familiar with big words, I am interested in trying to render big ideas in a simple way. I am interested in being understood not admired.

Lucille Clifton

Writing, Simple, Ideas

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It was Friday, July 24, 1992, when I stepped on the train. Every year I think of it. I see it as my real birthday: the birth of me as a person, making decisions about my life on my own. I was not running away from Islam, or to democracy. I didn't have any big ideas then. I was just a young girl and wanted some way to be me; so I bolted into the unknown.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Girl, Friday, Running

Ayaan Hirsi Ali (2008). “Infidel”, p.204, Simon and Schuster

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The big idea we start with is: "How is the genome interpreted, and how are stable decisions that affect gene expression inherited from one cell to the next?" This is one of the most competitive areas of molecular biology at the moment, and the students are reading papers that in some instances were published this past year. As a consequence, one of the most common answers I have to give to their questions is, "We just don't know."

Shirley M. Tilghman

Reading, Knowledge, Past

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Big data will never give you big ideas... Big data doesn't facilitate big leaps of the imagination. It will never conjure up a PC revolution or any kind of paradigm shift. And while it might tell you what to aim for, it can't tell you how to get there

Margaret Heffernan

Data, Ideas, Giving

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When we know why we're here as individuals and leaders, when our people know why they're here, a sense of purpose carries us forward, and we can do what needs to be done. People want to work on big ideas that matter to them and make a difference. When they do, they find gold.

Howard Behar

Ideas, Differences, People

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These people who are always briskly doing something and as busy as waltzing mice, they have little, sharp, staccato ideas, such as: "I see where I can make an annual cut of $3.47 in my meat budget." But they have no slow, big ideas.

Brenda Ueland

Cutting, Thinking, Ideas

Brenda Ueland (2013). “If You Want to Write”, p.23, Simon and Schuster

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As Einstein queried, 'Why is it that I get my best ideas in the morning while I'm shaving?' Shaving is like meditation with a sharp object. When the mind is empty and receptive, big ideas flow through every cell of our body. When we're thinking too hard, we tense up and nothing can flow through us; our energy gets stuck in our heads. Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and trust that if you turn off your head, your feet will take you where you need to go.

Gabrielle Roth

Morning, Thinking, Cells

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People in my family and camp who grew up listening to rap music love 'We Are Young.' I've heard it play at weddings. I've heard it in graduation parties. It's a big idea and big song.

Janelle Monae

Inspirational, Funny, Graduation

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The only big ideas I've ever had came from daydreaming, but modern life keeps people from daydreaming. Every moment of the day your mind is being occupied, controlled by someone else - at school, at work, watching television. Getting away from all that is really important. You need to just kick back in a chair and let your mind daydream.

Paul MacCready

School, Ideas, People

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What is the most powerful lever you can imagine? A big idea, but only if it's in the hands of a truly outstanding entrepreneur. It starts with the person and the idea, and then grows to the institution. All three are intertwined.

Bill Drayton

Powerful, Hands, Ideas

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We've had three big ideas at Amazon that we've stuck with for 18 years, and thy're the reason we're successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.

Jeff Bezos

Educational, Successful, Years

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That's so her. You know, torn between Big Ideas and a party. She's always been that way.

Claire Messud

Party, Ideas, Way

FaceBook post by Claire Messud from Jan 20, 2013

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Now, ideas are the raw material of progress. Everything first takes shape in the form of an idea. But an idea itself is worth nothing. An idea, like a machine, must have power applied to it before it can accomplish anything. The men who have won fame and fortune through having an idea are those who devoted every ounce of their strength and every dollar they could muster to putting it into operation. Ford had a big idea, but he had to sweat and suffer and sacrifice to make it work.

B. C. Forbes

Strength, Sacrifice, Men

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My second record was all about big ideas - I was trying to make big statements about the culture, about life. I think in a certain way, I was a 27 year old kid with a guitar

Duncan Sheik

Kids, Thinking, Guitar

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Rather than exist each day in some dull, boring habitual manner, move into action on a big idea. Everyone is on the brink of possibility. Your responsibility is to discover what that possibility is for you. Ideas can turn you on, they can wind you up. The right idea can and will add a new dimension to your life.

Bob Proctor

Motivational, Moving, Responsibility

FaceBook post by Bob Proctor from Dec 13, 2011

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Leaders must pick causes they won't abandon easily, remain committed despite setbacks, and communicate their big ideas over and over again in every encounter.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Talking, Ideas, Leader

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Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy to finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one area where I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter, and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

J. K. Rowling

Daughter, Determination, Rocks

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It's very useful to have a good grasp of all the big ideas in hard and soft science. A, it gives perspective. B, it gives a way for you to organize and file away experience in your head, so to speak.

Charlie Munger

Ideas, Giving, Perspective

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Idealism is based on big ideas. And, as anybody who has ever been asked "What's the big idea?" knows, most big ideas are bad ones.

P. J. O'Rourke

Ideas, Bigs, Idealism

P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty”, p.256, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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I think the greatest thing we give each other is encouragement...knowing that I'm talking to someone in this mentoring relationship who's interested in the big idea here is very, very important to me. I think if it were just about helping me get to the next step, it would be a heck of a lot less interesting.

Anne Sweeney

Encouragement, Thinking, Talking

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