These reactionary ideas continually clash with people’s experience. The clash of most human beings’ experience with the ideas handed down to them led to the formation of an independent labour movement, with independent labour parties, organised to challenge capitalism. This in turn led to a further ideological offensive by the ruling class on the exploitation of ideas, with the unhappy result in the western democracies that the official labour movements were shackled to the exploiters they set out to tame. Paul Foot, Workers’ Movement: The Party Has Just Begun
Writing is nothing less than thought transference, the ability to send one’s ideas out into the world, beyond time and distance, taken at the value of the words, unbound from the speaker. Arthur M Jolly, interview Purple Pencil Adventures, 2010
Me, and thousands of others in this country like me, are half-baked, because we were never allowed to complete our schooling. Open our skulls, look in with a penlight, and you’ll find an odd museum of ideas: sentences of history or mathematics remembered from school textbooks (no boy remembers his schooling like the one who was taken out of school, let me assure you), sentences about politics read in a newspaper while waiting for someone to come to an office, triangles and pyramids seen on the torn pages of the old geometry textbooks which every tea shop in this country uses to wrap its snacks in, bits of All India Radio news bulletins, things that drop into your mind, like lizards from the ceiling, in the half hour before falling asleep – all these ideas, half-formed and half-digested and half-correct, mix up with other half-cooked ideas in your head, and I guess these half-formed ideas bugger one another, and make more half-formed ideas, and this is what you act on and live with. Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria. A virus. An intestinal worm? An idea. Inception 2010 starring Leonardo di Caprio & Joseph Gordon-Levitt & Ellen Page & Tom Hardy & Ken Watanabe & Dileep Rao & Cillian Murphy & Tom Berenger & Pete Postlethwaite & Michael Caine & Lukas Haas et al, director Christopher Nolan
What kind of idea are you? Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accommodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive; or are you the cussed, bloody-minded, ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway with the breeze? – The kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of hundred, be smashed to bits; but, the hundredth time, will change the world. Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
I could not possibly exist with the nature I actually have, that is, one endowed with the idea of God, unless there really is a God; the very God, I mean, of whom I have an idea. Rene Descartes
Big bold dangerous ideas that would bring the world as we know it kicking and screaming into being. Bettany Hughes, Marx: Genius of the Modern World, BBC 2016
Mikhail Gromov, the geometer whose book Partial Differential Relations builds on Nash’s work ... ‘Many of us have the power to develop existing ideas. We follow paths prepared by others. But most of us could never produce anything comparable to what Nash produced. It’s like lightning striking. Psychologically the barrier he broke is absolutely fantastic. He has completely changed the perspective on partial differential equations. There has been some tendency in recent decades to move from harmony to chaos. Nash says chaos is just around the corner’. Sylvia Nasar
The major sports have grown kind of boring and predictable, and the public has become jaded. So I’m suggesting a few changes that would add excitement to the games and increase their entertainment value. Baseball has one major problem: not enough serious injuries … Fans are crying out for someone to really be hurt badly, so, to raise the injury level, what I would do is place thirty to forty land-mines in the outfield … Like most good ideas it’s uncomplicated: if the pitcher hits the batter with the ball the batter is out. That’s it. A simple idea. But it could make quite a difference. And maybe if the ball hits the batter in the head it could be a double play … George Carlin, More Napalm & Silly Putty
Governments are a breeding ground for stupid ideas: #5: Voluntary taxation … The bill was shunted off into committee where it was never heard from again … Norway launched voluntary tax scheme … #4: Quails on Cocaine … #3: Nuking the Moon … #2: The Tsar Tank … #1: Animals as weapons. The Corbett Report, 5 Stupid Ideas Governments Actually Tried
All you need is love and to believe in yourself. Nice idea. It doesn’t exactly work out that way. Monster 2003 starring Charlize Theron & Christina Ricci & Bruce Dern & Lee Tergesen & Annie Corley & Pruitt Taylor Vince & Marco St John & Marc Macaulay & Scott Wilson & Kane Hodder & Brett Rice et al, director Patty Jenkins, Aileen Wuornos
We are told to remember the idea not the man … An idea can still change the world. I’ve witnessed first hand the power of ideas. I’ve seen people kill in the name of them. V for Vendetta 2005 starring Hugo Weaving & Natalie Portman & John Hurt & Stephen Rea & Stephen Fry & Tim Pigott-Smith & Rupert Graves & Roger Allam & John Standing & Eddie Marsam & Ben Miles et al, director James McTeigue, opening commentary
Ray: I need our six thousand bucks … I’ve got a brilliant idea. I’m gonna make us rich.
Frenchie: How you gonna make us rich? Rob a bank? Small Time Crooks 2000 starring Woody Allen & Tracey Ullman & Elaine May & Elaine Stritch & Hugh Grant & Michael Rapaport & Tony Darrow & Jon Lovitz & Brian Markinson & George Grizzard & Kristine Nielson et al, director Woody Allen
For almost all of human history the dream of flying remained just that: a dream. But we’re a strange creative species. Over the ages the idea of human flight passed from one mind to another and eventually it would change the world. But the story of how we took to the sky is full of extraordinary accidents and bizarre connections. Jim Al-Khalili, Revolutions: The Ideas that Changed the World I: The Aeroplane, BBC 2019
A story of ingenuity, of wonder, of revolutions. ibid.
At this very moment at least half a million people are flying … The invention of aeroplane has been a true revolution. ibid.
Aviation has shrunk the world. ibid.
The story of human flight is older than you might imagine. ibid.
Leonardo da Vinci: Instead of attaching the wings to the arms, they will be part of a machine that will have beating wings like a bird … He designed more than a dozen machines that flapped their wings. ibid.
George Cayley: the same dream: to build a flying machine … In Scarborough Cayley’s dream would take flight … Cayley had created the first working glider. ibid.
Wilbur and Orville Wright: an obsession with mechanical flight. ibid.
Otto Lilienthal: The dream of a flying man was real at last even though the flight couldn’t be sustained … Lilienthal died knowing that sustained flight should be possible. ibid.
The Wright brothers managed to create an engine that was light enough to power their aeroplane … The world’s first powered flight took place at Kitty Hawk. ibid.
Frank Whittle: a completely new kind of engine … He came up with this: the jet engine. ibid.
It will take an unlikely alliance with a dangerous predator, devastating floods, a nineteenth century publicity stunt, an avalanche of horse manure, exploding cannons and a trip to the slaughterhouse to get the ultimate freedom machine – the car. Jim Al-Khalili, Revolutions: The Ideas that Changed the World II: Car
Today around 1.2 billion automobiles transport us from place to place on some 32 billion kilometres of road. ibid.
Dogs were humankind’s first engine. ibid.
Horse-powered vehicles dominated transportation for the next five thousand years. ibid.
Thomas Newcomen: An engine that harnessed a new type of power – steam. ibid.
But building a piston that fits so precisely within a cylinder that could contain that steam under high pressure was really tricky for eighteenth century engineers. ibid.
In 1886 German invention and engineer Karl Benz had his patent accepted for what is regarded as the world’s first automobile. ibid.
A must-have plaything for the rich and famous. ibid.
By 1900 one third of all cars were powered by electricity. ibid.
Ford’s second revolution was to mass-produce the parts. ibid.
The car has revolutionised almost every aspect of our lives and it’s reshaped our world. ibid.
It’s a spirit which has carried us off the planet to new frontiers which one day may make us a multi-planetary species … To create a machine with the power to break free from Earth’s gravity and hurl us towards other worlds. Jim Al-Khalili, Revolutions: The Ideas that Changed the World III: Rocket
A rocket revolution is upon us with more companies building and launching their own rockets than at any other time in human history. ibid.
This is the story of humanity’s greatest adventure. And our grandest dreams. And who knows what effect this will have on society. ibid.