ideology

"The idea that man can do everything he wants at the expense of the non-man elements is a ignorant and dangerous notion." - Thich Nhat Hanh

"Perhaps ideology and hegemony do not require the kind of conspiracy that Karl Marx envisioned but rather arise naturally from the evolutionary behavior of memes endeavoring after their own survival." - Edward Wilson & Wes Unruh

"Americans adopted the notion that acting on principle, standing up and fighting for what one believes in, is virtuous, while changing one's mind, even on sufficient evidence, is unprincipled flip-flopping and unseemly. This surely has its foundation in the American addiction to ideology which places greater value on belief than on knowledge. Since no prominent person, especially one holding elective office, wants to be labeled "unprincipled," people are loath to change their views even when they know those views are wrong. Once they have decided that being "principled" is more important than being right, they have no inclination or desire to question the validity of their views by seeking the truth." - John Kozy

idea

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives lights without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Ideas then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." - Thomas Jefferson

"There is probably no belief stronger than that the ideas that occur to each of us are uniquely our own. The fact is that hundreds, if not thousands, of others have at one time had the same idea - and believed it to be their own. In the narcissistic notion that my idea is unique, vanity all too often wins." - Paul Goldstein

"By passing on ideas through social interaction, by means of language, records, images, symbols, gestures, and sounds, our development has proceeded far more rapidly than by encoding particular types of information in genes. The information that can be passed on by these behavioral and cultural means is of a type that cannot be transferred by genetic inheritance. It enables learning, teaching, and knowledge to accumulate. Whereas information transfer by genetic means is limited to inheritance by the offspring of an individual, the influence of ideas and culture is limitless in its potential range. Favourable adaptations can be spread through the population very rapidly. An idea, like taking physical exercise or avoiding unhealthy food products which can be seen to enhance the chance of survival, can become a common possession almost overnight, once propagated by mass media. Cultural transmission allows detailed information about the local environment to be passed on quickly, and is essential for survival in an environment that changes more rapidly than the time interval between successive generations." - John D. Barrow

ideal

"An ideaist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage,
concludes that it will also make better soup." - H.L. Mencken

"There cannot be peaceful coexistence in the ideological realm.
Peaceful coexistence corrupts." -Jiang Qing

"I reserve my greatest disdain for rigid political ideologies and ideologues, mostly because they demonize their enemies and call incessantly for absolute discipline for 'the cause'." - Gregory Rodriquez

ideologue

-ism

socialism

"The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by resistence to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight!" - Ludwig Von Mises

"Socialism is the phantastic younger brother of despotism, which it wants to inherit. Socialism wants to have the fullness of state force which before only existed in despotism. However, it goes further than anything in the past because it aims at the formal destruction of the individual who can be used to "improve" communities by an expedient organ of government." – Friedrich Nitzsche

"Only a large-scale popular movement toward decentralization and self-help can arrest the present tendency toward statism. A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers." -- Aldous Huxley, Forward to 'Brave New World', 1932