The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

Faith is a precursor of all our ideas.

Over the years I have discovered that ideas come through an intense desire for them; continually desiring, the mind becomes a watch-tower on the look-out for incidents that may excite the imagination – music, a sunset, may give image to an idea.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.”

I cook a mean Sunday lunch. My idea of Heaven is a lunch outside on a beautifully sunny Sunday afternoon. It's the time to gather everyone together.

“….ideal goods cannot be assimilated without some training and leisure. Like education and religion they are degraded by popularity, and reduced from what the master intended to what the people are able and willing to receive. So pleasing an idea, then, as this of diffused ideal possessions has little application in a society aristocratically framed; for the greater eminence the few attain the less able are the many to follow them. Great thoughts require a great mind and pure beauties a profound sensibility. To attempt to give such things a wide currency is to be willing to denaturalise them in order to boast that they have been propagated. Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble it must remain rare, if common it must become mean.”

“To the uninitiated they have merely murmured, with a pitying smile and a wave of the hand: What! are you still troubled by that? Or if compelled to be so scholastic as to labour the point they have explained, as usual, that oneself cannot be the absolute because the idea of oneself, to arise, must be contrasted with other ideas. Therefore, you cannot well have the idea of a world in which nothing appears but the idea of yourself.”

“What we’re told about this country is way too limited by generalities, sound bites, and even the supposedly enlightened idea that there are two sides to every question. In fact, many questions have three or seven or a dozen sides.” 

I wish I was writing something much more heavy each time I did a film, and that the comedies just occasionally come out. But unfortunately you're stuck with what you're born with.

I like broad comedy. If I had an idea tomorrow for a film that was all slapstick and broad comedy, and it was an idea that interested me, I would not hesitate to do it because I enjoy watching these kinds of film.

I'm generally not a social dramatist or comedy writer. My interests have always been more in psychological stories or personal relations and comic ideas.

I'm a comedian. I make comic films and there are certain ideas that occur to me that are comic, with heavy, serious undertones. There are some ideas that are more frivolous to me. The next idea that could occur to me could be comedy about death and famine or something.

“Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.

“The whole curse of the last century has been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum; that is, the idea that Man must go alternately from one extreme to the other. It is a shameful and even shocking fancy; it is the denial of the whole dignity of the mankind. When Man is alive he stands still. It is only when he is dead that he swings.”

“Women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men.” 

“Liberty is the very last idea that seems to occur to anybody, in considering any political or social proposal. It is only necessary for anybody for any reason to allege any evidence of any evil in any human practice, for people instantly to suggest that the practice should be suppressed by the police.”

An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.

 I have begun everything with the idea that I could succeed, and I never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot succeed

"A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind."

Compassion is of little value if it just remains an idea. It must motivate how we respond to others and be reflected in all our thoughts and actions.

Faith is a great thing, and really religious people would like us to believe that faith and knowing are the same thing, but I don't believe that myself. Because there are too many different ideas on the subject. What we know is this: When we die, one of two things happens. Either our souls and thoughts somehow survive the experience of dying or they don't. If they do, that opens up every possibility you could think of. If they don't, it's just blotto. The end

If you deny people their own voice, you'll have no idea of who they were.

I like the idea of putting your Christmas wish list up and letting people share it.

We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.