I always tell people that revelling in big ideas for me is kind of like an antidote to existential angst.
Human language is lit with animal life: we play cats-cradle or have hare-brained ideas; we speak of badgering, or outfoxing someone; to squirrel something away and to ferret it out.
What's most important in animation is the emotions and the ideas being portrayed. I'm a great believer of energy and emotion.
The caricature of me in 1986 was not correct. I do not harbor the kind of animosity and race-based discrimination ideas that I was accused of. I did not.
To me, constructive criticism is when people take ownership of their ideas. That's why I don't listen to anything that's anonymous. But it's hard; when there's something hurtful out there, I still want to read it over and over and memorize it and explain my point of view to the person.
For ideas to prevail, many of their defenders have to die in obscurity. Their anonymous influence makes itself felt.
On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
A word about blue jeans, which, when I was growing up, were called dungarees, one of the more unfortunate marketing ideas of our time: Starting as a work garment for miners, the ubiquitous blue jeans became a staple of the counterculture starting when Brando wore them in 'On the Waterfront' and remained so through the anti-war protests of the '70s.
The Right has such antiquated ideas - if they took charge, I think they'd want to close the parks, open the land up for development. It's an ongoing battle to keep the parks strong.
A moral monopoly is the antithesis of a marketplace of ideas.
Not to engage in the pursuit of ideas is to live like ants instead of like men.
I write in coffee shops, libraries, parks, museums. I get antsy and then get on my bike and go someplace else, letting the ideas spin around in my head as I dodge taxis.
I collect axioms, paradoxes, maxims, teaching stories, proverbs, and aphorisms of all sorts, because I love to see complex ideas distilled into a few words.
Conservatives are often fond of La Rochefoucauld's famous aphorism that 'Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue,' and so tend to downplay hypocrisy as a sin. But in the marketplace of ideas they champion, hypocrisy may yet turn out to be the deadliest - or costliest - of sins.
It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.
Several southern actors are coming to Mumbai. Likewise, many Bollywood actors are appearing down South or borrowing ideas from southern films.
In Seattle, I soon found that my radical ideas and aesthetic explorations - ideas and explorations that in Richmond, Virginia, might have gotten me stoned to death with hush puppies - were not only accepted but occasionally applauded.
I did my utmost to ensure that everyone below me in the chain of command felt comfortable approaching me with concerns, ideas, thoughts, and even disagreements.
I am hopeful that the concept of 'cultural appropriation' is a passing fad: people with different backgrounds rubbing up against each other and exchanging ideas and practices is self-evidently one of the most productive, fascinating aspects of modern urban life.
You would think that American educators would want our kids, especially our kids from poorer families, to hear what top-rated Oxford students hear. But you'd be wrong. American schools now hide their students from ideas like mine if they don't approve of the man or the message.
