Idea Power

“When ideas say jump YOU say how high!”

Every action of your life was influenced by an idea. Whether it be something as primal as the need to eat or defend yourself from harm, to something as complex as a moral principle or a political position, an idea was present as the cause of every action you have taken. This is idea power, or rather the power of ideas. We are constantly subject to them, but it is important to remember that they are also subject to us. With time we can control our reflexes just as we control what we say in intellectual debates. We can learn to respond to danger by fighting instead of running, we can learn to sate our hunger by feeding ourselves. We can also choose to follow a different religion or philosophy if we find one to be innaccurate or lacking. By doing this we form the ideas that control us and give us the freedom to choose which ideas we follow and which ones we ignore. Never the less, ideas have been around as long as we have, and may even continue on past us

Powerful people tell humanity what to do, but it is their powerful ideas that give their orders. Mightier than the seemingly mighty elite are the ideas which govern them. It is ideas which rule.

“The empires of the future will be empires of the mind.”

—Winston Churchhill

“We are fighting the everlasting battle for the minds of men to indoctrinate people with the capitalist story because if we don’t, the rising political power of the masses will be a hazard to private power and interests.”

—Bretton Woods Papers

“Opinions are subject to revolutions as well as empires.”

—Voltaire

"The information war is a war we cannot afford to lose.”

—Adbusters

“How will you answer your children when they ask you, ‘What did you do in the war?’ ”

“You can fight an invading army, but you cannot stop an idea whose time has come.”

—Victor Hugo

“Violence is the last resort of the incompetent.”

—Gandhi

“To fight and conquer in one hundred battles is not the highest skill. To subdue the enemy with no fight at all, that’s the highest skill.”

—Sun Tzu, Art of War

“If you follow me to this place, the entire world is a battlefield.”

—Guts in Berserk, a Manga by Kentaro Myura

"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?"

—Joseph Stalin

Knowledge Is Emancipation

Ideas in a way are slavery. Knowledge is the test by which to evaluate ideas.

"Change your thoughts and you change your world."

—Norman Vincent Peale  

Non-Violence

“One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.”

—Socrates

Idea power is stronger than violence.

Learn More 

Read the Idea Power Model in Ideapedia to learn more about using ideas as empowering tools to change the world.