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Full Idea
In itself, every idea is neutral, or should be; but man animates ideas, projects his flames and flaws into them.
Gist of Idea
Ideas are neutral, but people fill them with passion and weakness
Source
E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Genealogy')
Book Ref
Cioran,E.M.: 'A Short History of Decay', ed/tr. Howard,Richard [Penguin 2010], p.3
A Reaction
If it isn't neutral (if, say, it expresses love or hatred) then presumably it doesn't qualify as an 'idea'. Are ideas as neutral as mathematical theorems. It's a nice remark, and a good epigraph for a book on the history of ideas.
| 12104 | All ideas must be understood historically [Comte] |
| 12105 | Our knowledge starts in theology, passes through metaphysics, and ends in positivism [Comte] |
| 19624 | Intelligence only fully flourishes at the end of a historical period [Cioran] |
| 19599 | Ideas are neutral, but people fill them with passion and weakness [Cioran] |
| 19631 | The history of ideas (and deeds) occurs in a meaningless environment [Cioran] |
| 19629 | A nation gives expression to its sum of values, and is then exhausted [Cioran] |
| 19645 | Some thinkers would have been just as dynamic, no matter when they had lived [Cioran] |
| 7460 | The great moments are the death of Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Romanticism [Berlin, by Watson] |
| 21852 | Nomads are the basis of history, and yet almost unknowable [Deleuze] |
| 7461 | The three key ideas are the soul, Europe, and the experiment [Watson] |
| 7464 | The big idea: imitation, the soul, experiments, God, heliocentric universe, evolution? [Watson] |