A Quote by Ayn Rand

An idea is a light turned on in a man's soul. Comic-strip artists are in the habit of representing it by means of a light bulb flashing on, above the head of a character who has suddenly grasped an idea. In simple, primitive terms, this is an appropriate symbol.

Ayn Rand

Quote Topics

Above Appropriate Artists Bulb Character Comic Flashing Habit Head Idea Light Light Bulb Man Means Primitive Representing Simple Soul Strip Suddenly Symbol Terms Turned

Quote Author

Ayn Rand
Russian - Writer
February 2, 1905 - March 6, 1982

You make a movie, and if there's a red light flashing in the distance, everyone thinks that the director had a whole lot of money and a great idea that the red light means something. Then you say, 'Yeah, we couldn't afford to shut the red light off that was broken two blocks away.'

Dito Montiel

If you don't know a light bulb is a three-way light bulb, it messes with your head. You reach to turn it off, and it just gets brighter! That's the exact opposite of what I wanted you to do! So you turn the switch again, and it gets brighter once more! I will break you, light bulb!

Mitch Hedberg

Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free.

Frederick Douglass

The light bulb going off in my head was a fear that in this pivotal moment in history, when America faces so many serious problems, when the middle class and working class of this country are being decimated, that there were not voices out there representing the tens of millions of people who needed a voice. And the idea of going through a campaign where there is not a serious discussion about the most important issues facing America, where there are not voices out there representing people who are hurting - that seemed to me unacceptable.

Bernie Sanders

When Edison first started out with his "crazy" idea for the light bulb, skeptics were unmoved. They called Thomas Edison a con man and taunted him to prove his bulb could really work. Despite the naysayers, Edison pushed on, demonstrating the importance of sticking with his "crazy" idea which would go on to turn him into one of the world's most well-known entrepreneurs. The key here is to fan the foolish fire no matter what!

Linda Rottenberg

As far as where I go when I die, the concept that I am simple going to flick out, like a light bulb, to me is not only spiritually impossible to believe, but logically it is laughable - the idea that we simply die and nothing happens.

Stephen King

And suddenly, like light in darkness, the real truth broke in upon me; the simple fact of Man, which I had forgotten, which had lain deep buried and out of sight; the idea of community, of unity.

Ernst Toller

'Don't be the moth. Be the light bulb.' When I say that I mean don't follow the crowd. Just shine. Be the light bulb. Do your thing. Pave your own path.

Sara Paxton

Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there. A new idea is a light that illuminates presences which simply had no form before the light fell on them.

Susanne Katherina Langer

I've long ago learned that if an idea will stand on its own, it'll stand having the light shone on it. But if you shine light on it and it kind of withers, then it probably wasn't a very good idea.

John Fogerty

And to lose the chance to see frigatebirds soaring in circles above the storm, or a file of pelicans winging their way homeward across the crimson afterglow of the sunset, or a myriad terns flashing in the bright light of midday as they hover in a shifting maze above the beach -- why, the loss is like the loss of a gallery of the masterpieces of the artists of old time.

Theodore Roosevelt

How many Republicans does it take to change a light bulb? Three. One to mix the martinis, one to change the light bulb, and one to reminisce about how good the old one was.

Christopher Buckley

Everybody has their own idea of what's a poet. Robert Frost, President Johnson, T.S.Eliot, Rudolf Valentino - they're all poets. I like to think of myself as the one who carries the light bulb.

Bob Dylan

The soul of man, left to its own natural level, is a potentially lucid crystal left in darkness. It is perfect in its own nature, but it lacks something that it can only receive from outside and above itself. But when the light shines in it, it becomes in a manner transformed into light and seems to lose its nature in the splendor of a higher nature, the nature of the light that is in it.

Thomas Merton

The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light, just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning. Light within light...It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul, the singular light within that great general light of existence.