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IDEA:

¶ "Nothing else in the world ... not all the armies ... is so powerful as an idea whose time has come." (Victor Hugo.)
IDEAS & THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD:

¶ "When I had taken in any new idea, I could not rest till I had adjusted its relation to my old opinions, and ascertained exactly how far its effect ought to extend in modifying or superseding them." (John Stuart Mill, Autobiography.)

IDEAS, MARKET OF ...:

¶ We should look to the definition and the operation of the market (see blupete's commentary of -- February 21st, 1999) and to understand that market principles apply equally well to ideas. It is the best argument against totalitarianism. In a totalitarian state, disputes (at times unmanageable) arise between the people and the central authority; to be compared with a democracy with a limited government, where disputes are generally between individuals or small groups (and which are manageable through an independent judiciary).
IDOLS:

¶ "There are four classes of Idols which beset men's minds. To these for distinction's sake I have assigned names: calling the first class, Idols of the Tribe; the second, Idols of the Cave; the third, Idols of the Market-Place; the fourth, Idols of the Theater." (Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, Aphorism 39.)
IGNORANCE:

¶ "Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise."

¶ "Ignorance: The fruitful parent of hostility and contempt." (George Macaulay Trevelyan.)
IMAGINATION:

¶ [Imagination is] that wondrous faculty, which, left to ramble uncontrolled, leads us astray into a wilderness of perplexities and errors, a land of mists and shadows; but which properly controlled by experience and reflection, becomes the noblest attribute of man: the source of poetic genius, the instrument of discovery ... (Sir Benjamin Brodie, in an address to the Royal Society, 1859; as quoted by John Tyndall, Fragments.)
INFLATION:

§ See blupete's essay -- "Shooting The Central Banker."
INDIVIDUALISM:

¶ A true individualist will hold to his own independent judgment, even when others agree with him.

¶ "The young spirit pants to enter society. But all the ways of culture and greatness lead to solitary imprisonment. [Only, Emerson continues, "inflamed individualism" will keep one away from the herd.]"
INNOCENCE, THE PRESUMPTION OF ...:

§ See blupete's commentary of -- October 24th, 1999.
INTUITIVE SCHOOL:

¶ "The notion that truths external to the mind may be known by intuition or consciousness, independently of observation and experience, is, I am persuaded, in these times, the great intellectual support of false doctrines and bad institutions. By the aid of this theory, every inveterate belief and every intense feeling, of which the origin is not remembered, is enabled to dispense with the obligation of justifying itself by reason, and is erected into its own all-sufficient voucher and justification." (John Stuart Mill, Autobiography.)
IRISH PROBLEM:

¶ "... the Irish regard the British as strangers and neighbors with whom intimate friendship is impracticable, Ireland has appeared to the British mind as a recurring inconvenience, a distant relative always wanting relief, a wayward being whose ardent enthusiasm is not to be comprehended. The Irish mind is by nature politically disposed; it is romantic, adventurous, readily roused to fight for a cause. The Briton's temperament is rather to rely on undisturbed government, to let well alone, to preserve an equable poise, to respond slowly when invited to perform emotional acts." [Chatterton, A Life of William Pitt, (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1930).]
ITALY:

¶ "Italy is a land of volcanoes, more or less subdued. It is a great grapery, built over a flue. If the earthquake did not come, it was thought the crops were not so good." [Leigh Hunt's Autobiography (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1870).]

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