Isak Dinesen Quotes

The man with a new idea is a crank until his idea succeeds.

You cannot imprison an idea. You have to fight it with a better idea.

The greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.

The innovator has for enemies all who have done well under the old, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.

Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

Never can a new idea move within the law. It matters not whether that idea pertains to political and social changes or to any other domain of human thought and expression … How can it be otherwise? The law is stationary, fixed, mechanical, "a chariot wheel" which grinds all alike without regard to time, place and condition, without ever taking into account cause and effect, without ever going into the complexity of the human soul.

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common

One who accepts the general ideas of his time gets along smoothest, but he does least for progress.

Progress is never accepted by everybody.

The great thing about ideas is that every new idea leads to two more new ones. It’s the opposite of a gold rush, where the more people who show up in 1849 to get that gold in California, the faster the gold runs out. Ideas are not like that; ideas breed.

Any time there's significant change, there's going to be some people who embrace the change and others who are against the change.

We can just keep doing it the way we're doing it. We can attack everybody for small-minded things and crush everybody with a new idea. And where are we going to be? Where we are now - behind. Or we can embrace new things and try to be positive and let everybody play a role.

You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change.

You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea.

The only way to oppose a bad idea is to replace it with a good idea.

The greatest difficulty in the world is not for people to accept new ideas, but to make them forget old ideas.

It is not so difficult a task as to plant new truths, as to root out old errors

Progress of any kind is always at variance with the old and established ideas and therefore with the codes inspired by them. Every step of progress is a change involving heavy risks.

One cannot resist an idea whose time has come.

If you ever have a new idea, and it's really new, you have to expect that it won't be widely accepted immediately. It's a long hard process.

When somebody comes up with a progressive idea, to begin with, you're mad, bonkers. Then if you go on, you're dangerous. Then there's a pause. Then you can't find anyone who can say they thought of it in the first place. That's how progress is made. This is why I do believe in the vote. In the end, all these people who've been tempted to the right realise the warning lights in their constituency are brighter than the bright lights from No. 10 offering them things.

So many new ideas are at first strange and horrible though ultimately valuable that a very heavy responsibility rests upon those who would prevent their dissemination.

Lead the ideas of your time and they will accompany and support you; fall behind them and they drag you along with them; oppose them and they will overwhelm you.

If there's a new idea, a new invention, or a new gas, or a new whatever you know, It should be brought at least into the open instead of carrying these same old burdens around with you.