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Whenever I attempt to frame a simple idea of time, abstracted from the succession of ideas in my mind, which flows uniformly, and is participated by all beings, I am lost and embrangled in inextricable difficulties.
Sep 17, 2025
The simple idea that if you treat people well, the way you would like to be treated, they will do the same.
The best ideas and the most useful and ground-breaking are often, though not always, in one sense, very simple ideas.
In the end no segregationist scheme has withstood the force of a simple idea: equality under law.
If we trace the progress of our minds, and with attention observe how it repeats, adds together, and unites its simple ideas received from sensation or reflection, it will lead us farther than at first, perhaps, we should have imagined.
What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've learned something about it yourself... The teacher usually learns more than the pupils. Isn't that true?
Quite apart from the prestige of technology, people do, after all, prefer a simple idea to a complex one.
Simple ideas become obsessions, almost like a meditation.
A normal life. Such a simple idea, but it's almost impossible for me to picture.
It was a most rewarding experience! I learned and saw how with a few simple ideas and concepts the same presentation can go from being standard and ordinary to interesting and involving.
Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds. Remy de Gourmont An idea is salvation by imagination
String theory is based on the simple idea that all the four forces of the universe: gravity, the electromagnetic force and the two nuclear forces, can be viewed, as music.
Good Deeds Day is based on a simple idea that every person can do a good deed for the benefit of others and the planet. Even a smile that brightens someone else's day is a good deed. I initiated Good Deeds Day to spread the message that everyone can give of themselves, according to their heart's desire.
Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.
Made with Pencils is grounded in the creativity of a few, propelled by the financial support of many, and most importantly, it's empowering generations to come. A simple idea, a heartfelt desire, and a world of possibility. A pencil, a promise, and a dream.
As a product of history and faith, Jewish Americans have helped to open our eyes to injustice, to people in need, and to the simple idea that we ought to recognize ourselves in the struggle of our fellow men and women.
The mind being, as I have declared, furnished with a great number of the simple ideas conveyed in by the senses, as they are found in exterior things, or by reflection on its own operations, take notice, also, that a certain number of these simple ideas go constantly together... which, by inadvertency, we apt afterward to talk of and condier as one simple idea.
How truly language must be regarded as a hindrance to thought, though the necessary instrument of it, we shall clearly perceive on remembering the comparative force with which simple ideas are communicated by signs. To say, "Leave the room," is less expressive than to point to the door. Place a finger on the lips is more forcible than whispering, "Do not speak." A beck of the hand is better than, "Come here." No phrase can convey the idea of surprise so vividly as opening the eyes and raising the eyebrows. A shrug of the shoulders would lose much by translation into words.
If we want our regulators to do better, we have to embrace a simple idea: regulation isn't an obstacle to thriving free markets; it's a vital part of them.
I got at a very early age, the idea that the safest way to try and get what you want, is to try and deserve what you want. It’s such a simple idea, it’s the golden rule so to speak. You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end.
It's a fantastic thing, a very simple idea. Irrespective of your politics, of your culture, of your race, of your whatever, hierdie ding doen ons saam...Here is one thing that can unite us irrespective of all of the things that are trying to tear us apart.
My dad said, "As long as you're happy." I used to think it was kind of a very simple idea or philosophy because he wasn't religious. But you've got to try and be happy. And if you're not happy, you can't help anyone else. So obviously, some crazy people could go to places, but I just think you need to be content within yourself, so that's the thing.
In this era of the global village, the tide of democracy is running. And it will not cease, not in China, not in South Africa, not in any corner of this earth, where the simple idea of democracy and freedom has taken root.
Some people are aware of another sort of thinking which... leads to those simple ideas that are obvious only after they have been thought of... the term 'lateral thinking' has been coined to describe this orther sort of thinking; 'vertical thinking' is used to denote the conventional logical process.
The play is a very simple idea really; someone needs some support and consolation, and she finds a place where she gets it.
It's easy to have a complicated idea. It's very hard to have a simple idea.
Genius is making complex ideas simple, not making simple ideas complex
It is my opinion that everything must be based on a simple idea. And it is my opinion that this idea, once we have finally discovered it, will be so compelling, so beautiful, that we will say to one another, yes, how could it have been any different.
It's a simple idea: We all do better when we work together and invest in our future.
You make the movie through the cinematography - it sounds quite a simple idea, but it was like a huge revelation to me.
The market being in a trend is the main thing that eventually gets us in a trade. That is a pretty simple idea. Being consistent and making sure you do that all the time is probably more important than the particular characteristics you use to define the trend. Whatever method you use to enter trades, the most critical thing is that if there is a major trend, your approach should assure that you get in that trend.
The simple idea that everyone needs a reasonable amount of challenging work in his or her life, and also a personal life, complete with noncompetitive leisure, has never really taken hold.
The television industry doesn't like to see the compexity of the world. It prefers simple reporting, with simple ideas: this is white, that's black; this is good, that's bad.
Big ideas are usually simple ideas.
What strikes me most about Best Buddies International is the simplicity and magnitude of the mission. Friendship is a simple idea.
I am a great believer in the simplicity of things and as you probably know I am inclined to hang on to broad & simple ideas like grim death until evidence is too strong for my tenacity.
Only simple ideas can be held by large groups of people. Commonly held ideas are almost always dumbed down until they are practically lies... and often dangerous ones. Once vast numbers of people have come to believe the lie, they adjust their own behavior to bring themselves into sync with it, and thereby change the world itself. The world, then, no longer resembles the one that gave rise to the original insight. Soon, a person's situation is so at odds with the world as it really is that a crisis develops, and he or she must seek a new metaphor for explanation and guidance.
The recalling of beautiful things, whether they are your own experiences or the acheivements of others, is a creative act. Simple ideas can be restated by rote; but profound ideas must be recreated by will and imagination.
I was looking for some way to put my music to some service on a nightly basis. You go into a town, you play a little music, you leave something behind. That idea connected us to the local community. It was a very simple idea, but it really resonated with me.
When I created Chipotle in 1993, I had a very simple idea: Offer a simple menu of great food prepared fresh each day, using many of the same cooking techniques as gourmet restaurants. Then serve the food quickly, in a cool atmosphere. It was food that I wanted, and thought others would like too. We've never strayed from that original idea. The critics raved and customers began lining up at my tiny burrito joint. Since then, we've opened a few more.
It was astonishing when at one point, I got the idea of how to make artifical clouds with a collaborator, we had pictures made which were theoretically completely artificial pictures based upon that one very simple idea. And this picture everybody views as being clouds.
One of the revelations in that book [Lincoln in the Bardo] for me was this idea about citizenship. Even that word - citizenship - for someone my age, it makes me cringe. But, to me, the political space we're in now argues for a reboot of fairly simple ideas and the examination of the way that Americans have not been living into them.
Angry Birds is a very simple idea but its one of those games that I immediately appreciated when I first started playing, before wishing that I had been the one to come up with the idea first.
There are also two kinds of truths, those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible, and those of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. When a truth is necessary its reason can be found by analysis, resolving it into more simple ideas and truths until we reach those which are primitive.
Everyone was talking about having airplanes disappear. And I said, "Wait, wait, wait. That's what you like? I'd tell you a story about something like my girlfriend leaving me, and the magic was really hard. The airplane thing was comparatively easy, and people liked that thing?" I realized at that moment, the power of the simple idea.
The techniques are all means of dealing with one simple idea: She wrote it. (That is, the "wrong" person--in this case, female--has created the "right" value--i.e., art.) Denial of Agency: She didn't write it. Pollution of Agency: She shouldn't have written it. Double Standard of Content: Yes, but look what she wrote about. False Categorizing: She is not really she [an artist] and it is not really it [serious, of the right genre, aesthetically sound, important, etc.] so how could "she" have written "it"? Or simply: Neither "she" nor "it" exists (simple exclusion).
A good ad is one simple idea, with humanity in it, that connects with consumers, that represents the value system of a company and then can connect it with the consumer. We always say a brand is set of shared values. So if you can simply demonstrate your value system as a brand, so that a consumer could say, "Ah, our values line up. I vote for you, brand!" that's a good ad.
Serious skeptics, true believers, and seekers of every stripe will want to read Mitch Horowitz's vibrant, probing, and richly researched account of the impact of the positive-thinking movement on every aspect of American life today. Filled with a cast of remarkable characters and many lively tales, One Simple Idea is a readable, responsible examination of the limits and possibilities of mind-power as a source of constructive transformation.
The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made.
The ability of nonintelligent people to understand the most complicated mechanisms and to use them has always been to me a cause of astonishment: their inability to understand simple questions is even more astonishing. The general acceptance of simple ideas is difficult and rare, and yet it is only when simple, fundamental, ideas have been accepted that further progress becomes possible on a higher level.