Ideas

Any new idea, Mahound, is asked two questions.
The first is asked when it’s weak:
WHAT KIND OF AN IDEA ARE YOU?
Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accommodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive;
or are you the cursed, bloody-minded ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway with the breeze?
- the kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, be smashed to bits;
but the hundredth time, will change the world?

What’s the second question? Gibreel asked.

Answer the first one first.

- The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

What kind of idea are you?