"Ideas move rapidly when their time comes"
About this Quote
Heilbrun’s line has the chill of a historian’s shrug and the provocation of a novelist’s plot twist: ideas don’t win because they’re “right,” they win because the world finally makes room for them. The sentence is built to dethrone the comforting myth of steady progress powered by lone geniuses. “Move rapidly” suggests contagion more than persuasion; when the timing is right, an idea spreads with the speed of recognition, not the pace of debate. It’s less about argument than atmosphere.
The subtext carries Heilbrun’s lifelong skepticism toward institutions that congratulate themselves for “evolving” while quietly stalling change. As a feminist writer and scholar attuned to how women’s lives get narrated, she understood that social permission often matters more than moral clarity. An idea can sit in plain sight for decades - argued, footnoted, lived - and still be treated as eccentric until a cultural tipping point turns it into common sense. Then it retroactively looks inevitable, as if society simply “caught up,” rather than conceded.
Context matters here: Heilbrun wrote in and about the long arc of second-wave feminism, academia’s gatekeeping, and the politics of biography - arenas where the difference between marginal and mainstream is frequently a question of who controls the story. The intent isn’t to tell activists to wait patiently; it’s to warn them that timing is a force, not an excuse. You don’t just craft ideas. You prepare conditions: language, networks, examples of alternative lives. When the time comes, velocity is the reward for years of being ignored.
The subtext carries Heilbrun’s lifelong skepticism toward institutions that congratulate themselves for “evolving” while quietly stalling change. As a feminist writer and scholar attuned to how women’s lives get narrated, she understood that social permission often matters more than moral clarity. An idea can sit in plain sight for decades - argued, footnoted, lived - and still be treated as eccentric until a cultural tipping point turns it into common sense. Then it retroactively looks inevitable, as if society simply “caught up,” rather than conceded.
Context matters here: Heilbrun wrote in and about the long arc of second-wave feminism, academia’s gatekeeping, and the politics of biography - arenas where the difference between marginal and mainstream is frequently a question of who controls the story. The intent isn’t to tell activists to wait patiently; it’s to warn them that timing is a force, not an excuse. You don’t just craft ideas. You prepare conditions: language, networks, examples of alternative lives. When the time comes, velocity is the reward for years of being ignored.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|
More Quotes by Carolyn
Add to List
