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Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas. The man of no ideas will find the first idea fly to his head like wine to the head of a teetotaller. It is a common error, I think, among the Radical idealists of my own party and period to suggest that financiers and business men are a danger to the empire because they are so sordid or so materialistic. The truth is that financiers and business men are a danger to the empire because they can be sentimental about any sentiment, and idealistic about any ideal, any ideal that they find lying about, just as a boy who has not known much of women is apt too easily to take a woman for the woman, so these practical men, unaccustomed to causes, are always inclined to think that if a thing is proved to be an ideal it is proved to be the ideal.

 

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

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To-day the [Enlightenment] ideal has been changed into a reality; not only in legislation, which is the mere framework of public life, but in the heart of every individual, whatever his ideas may be, and even if he be a reactionary in his ideas, that is to say, even when he attacks and castigates institutions by which those rights are sanctioned.… The sovereignty of the unqualified individual, of the human being as such, generically, has now passed from being a juridical idea or ideal to be a psychological state inherent in the average man. And note this, that when what was before an ideal becomes a component part of reality, it inevitably ceases to be an ideal. The prestige and the magic that are attributes of the ideal are volatilised.

 

Jose Ortega y Gasset

 

Connected with the conservative distrust of the new and the strange is its hostility to internationalism and its proneness to a strident nationalism. Here is another source of its weakness in the struggle of ideas. It cannot alter the fact that the ideas which are changing our civilization respect no boundaries. But refusal to acquaint one's self with new ideas merely deprives one of the power of effectively countering them when necessary. The growth of ideas is an international process, and only those who fully take part in the discussion will be able to exercise a significant influence. It is no real argument to say that an idea is un-American, or un-German, nor is a mistaken or vicious ideal better for having been conceived by one of our compatriots.

 

Friedrich Hayek

 

We are Communist, you are Capitalist. You have your ideas, we have ours. But I tell you this much: many American generals are very often sorry that they have no ideal to plant in the heart of the American soldier, so he will be willing to die for that ideal. You are jealous of us for this. The Communist soldier, the Red Army soldier, has such an ideal in his heart. He has it because he considers the ideal of the commander his own ideal. Your generals in Korea were sorry that Americans were not fighting willingly. We couldn't tell them why this was so, but I will tell you why. There is a difference between us. We have an advantage over you. We have an ideal for which we are prepared to die. You have not.

 

Rodion Malinovsky

 

(referring to people in favor of commercializing the Internet)"I suppose their thinking is that since ideas can be dangerous, there should be limits on which ideas are expressed. Which is only the foundation of fascism. Thanks, government!"

 

Brian Clevinger

 

The ideal of Morality has no more dangerous rival than the ideal of highest Strength, of most powerful life; which also has been named (very falsely as it was there meant) the ideal of poetic greatness. It is the maximum of the savage; and has, in these times, gained, precisely among the greatest weaklings, very many proselytes. By this ideal, man becomes a Beast-Spirit, a Mixture; whose brutal wit has, for weaklings, a brutal power of attraction.

 

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