You don't have ideas.
Ideas have you.

I have no ideas, only obsessions. Anybody can have ideas. Ideas have never caused anybody’s downfall.

Ideas are nothing.

There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas (and because it constantly produces them) that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.

It seems to me that in many ways, ideas have a life of their own. They appear to seize on people and make use of them.

Les idées ne sont pas faites pour être pensées mais vécues.

[I]s this not an advantage? Is it not a sign of immense progress that the masses should have "ideas," that is to say, should be cultured? By no means. The "ideas" of the average man are not genuine ideas, nor is their possession culture. An idea is a putting truth in checkmate. Whoever wishes to have ideas must first prepare himself to desire truth and to accept the rules of the game imposed by it. It is no use speaking of ideas when there is no acceptance of a higher authority to regulate them, a series of standards to which it is possible to appeal in a discussion. These standards are the principles on which culture rests.

The owner of an idea is not he who imagines it, but he who executes it.

Las ideas no necesitan ni de las armas, en la medida en que sean capaces de conquistar a las grandes masas. (Ideas do not need weapons, to the extent that they can convince the great masses.)

You cannot change the world with ideas. People with few ideas are less likely to make mistakes; they follow what everyone else does and are no trouble to anyone; they're successful, make money, find good jobs, enter politics, receive honours; they become famous writers, academics, journalists. Can anyone who is so good at looking after their own interests really be stupid? I'm the stupid one, the one who wanted to go tilting at windmills.

People don't realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature.

...the way you shape and change people’s minds is through ideas.

There’s a very popular notion out there that ideas change the world. That’s wrong. People change the world.

Ideas are, in truth, force.