Why Noting Can Be Done Again Movie Piracy

"A human being may die, nations may rise and autumn, but an idea lives on. Ideas accept endurance without death."

What is the most resilient parasite? An idea. A single idea from the human mind tin build cities, rewrite all the rules, and transform the world. Neither armies, nor dictators, nor fifty-fifty mortality have power over them; people die, simply their ideas do non.

In fiction, we go heroes dying just hope passed onto the audience by knowing that somehow his idea has lived on. Sometimes the hero is a martyr and his death is a beginning every bit people use information technology for inspiration; they are throwing off some kind of heed-breaking torture attempt to evidence that the forces of fascism can't control them. A book of philosophy or some diary may have survived him, or one of his inner circumvolve may tell his tale and so the story ends on a happy note, but not too happy. Our story is sorry, but the tide of inevitable revolution volition come.

The Trope Namer is WWII veteran and American ceremonious rights activist Medgar Evers, who stated that "you tin kill a man, but y'all can't kill an thought." He was later shot dead past a Klansman merely the ceremonious rights movement endured.

Super-Trope of Can't Stop the Bespeak. The characters who pass on the idea are likely Doomed Moral Victors. Likely to inspire an Innocent Bystander to make a Defiant Stone Throw. Compare Nosotros Are Everywhere for those bad ideas that can't exist killed, As Long as There is Evil for evil in general that tin't be killed, and Mind Virus for bad ideas that deserve to dice only are too sentient and/or also contagious to be killed by law of morality, man or god (and don't expect Time Travel or Villainous Rescue to set information technology either). Compare the Streisand Effect. See also Equally Long every bit There Is I Man.

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Examples:

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    Anime & Manga

• Ane Slice:
  • Both Gold Roger and Dr. Hiruluk died embracing this ideal. Gold Roger manages to starting time the Gilded Historic period of Piracy.
  • In the face up of a Marine victory which could take snuffed out the Golden Historic period of Piracy, Whitebeard, with his concluding jiff, proclaims that Roger's treasure does exist, thus reigniting the idea once more. The Marines were not happy with this.
  • The villains of the Fishman Isle arc endeavour to invoke this, hoping to accept their grudge confronting humans carry to the next generation by killing equally many people equally they can (humans and Fishman alike) when it looks like they're not going to win. As it turns out, y'all tin kill an idea, if yous do it with a opposite i. Luffy's human (though we use that loosely) crew fighting to protect Fishman Island causes that idea to blow up in their faces.
• Happens in Lawmaking Geass. Lelouch's ideals were to fight against injustice and tyranny caused largely by the Britannian Empire. Subsequently, he causes changes in the empire itself, and in the cease helps make the world a better place for nigh everyone, at the cost of his life and reputation, while passing on the torch of Zero to Suzaku.
  • Earlier in the 2d season, Lelouch pulls off a Moment of Crawly by exploiting this trope. When cut a deal with the Britannians, they want to know if he'due south the original and he gets them to concur that it doesn't matter, because anyone who wears the costume and espouses the beliefs is "Zero". Then when the Britannians announce that they're formally exiling Nix from Japan, a million of his supporters put on Aught costumes, pregnant the Britannians are forced to exile all of them, giving him a one thousand thousand-potent ground forces (the only reason why that same million isn't simply exterminated on the spot on the off chance that the real Nothing is amid them and to give all other rebels a lesson (and they were seriously entertaining the idea) is because the 1 in charge (Suzaku) still held a degree of Accolade Before Reason and had given his word that this agreement would exist upheld no matter what).
• After the formation of the team Dai Gurren in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Kamina dies in middle of the battle against every prediction. During the residuum of the series, he is remembered constantly as a role model for the main cast, specially Simon... to the point that the new futuristic metropolis is chosen Kamina City.
• In F-Zero GP Legend, earlier his base is destroyed, Blackness Shadow yells that he'll never dice, nor will his dreams. Captain Falcon responds past Falcon Punching him.
• In Dr. Stone, Tsukasa kills Senku later on the latter refuses to give up science when they awaken after having turned to stone for the past 3700 years. Tsukasa fears that Senku'south plans to use scientific discipline to revive adults and bring back the abuse they inherently had would ruin the new stone earth they found themselves in. However, Senku manages to survive the assassination attempt, and is amazed at a man named Chrome who had collected various items throughout his life, beingness fascinated past things and doing archaic experiments on them. Senku realizes that even had Tsukasa killed him, he couldn't have been able to stop everyone who like Chrome, was innately curious well-nigh how the earth worked. And sooner or later, humanity would rediscover much of the science and technology that had been lost from the erstwhile world.
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, this is role of Kaguya's Kirk Summation to the Large Bad Muzan, that so long every bit people have the will to fight demons, they'll never stop, and eventually he will dice. As Muzan sees those words come to fruition with the unabridged Demon Slayer Corps risking everything to impale him and succeed, Muzan adopts this philosophy and turns The Hero Tanjiro into his last and greatest demon, one who will carry on his will and destroy the Corps for him. Unfortunately for Muzan, Tanjiro mentally and physically (via an antitoxin) rejecting his demonhood means that Muzan's will ultimately dies with him.

    Comic Books

• 5 for Vendetta: The anarchist title graphic symbol, to Eric Finch, who'due south just shot him:

  V: Did you think to kill me? There's no flesh or claret inside this cloak to kill. There's only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof.

• In 300, Xerxes angrily declares that one time he defeats the Spartans, he will completely destroy them and wipe out whatsoever trace of them from history.

  Leonidas: The world will know that costless men stood against a tyrant, that few stood confronting many and, before this battle is over, that even a god-king tin can bleed.

• Bruce Wayne isn't the only 1 who's taken on the role of Batman. Many incarnations of the grapheme support the theme of Batman existence more than of an thought than a single person (especially The Nighttime Knight Trilogy).
• Watchmen: Rorschach'due south Journal is heavily implied to take been published after the events of the graphic novel, revealing Ozymandias' master plan to the broad public, even though Dr. Manhattan killed Rorschach SPECIFICALLY Then THAT It DOESN'T HAPPEN. Two wholly separate Alternating Universe continuations (Doomsday Clock and Watchmen (2019)) then continue to bear witness that the way the thought survives is probably not the one Rorschach would take been pleased to be role of.

  Rorschach: Never compromise. Even in the face of Apocalypse, never compromise. [Seconds after that, Dr. Manhattan blows him up.]

• In The Sandman, is is establish that the Vii Endless are capable of being killed (the methods and logistics being as archaic and eldritch equally the Endless themselves), but should the current incarnation of the Countless be killed, they volition be replaced with a new i because the Endless are the Anthropomorphic Personifications of abstruse concepts that permeate the universe. This first happened with Despair and later on with Dream, Morpheus having his place taken past Daniel equally the new incarnation of Dream. It is even implied that this will happen with every Endless (with the exception of Death, of course) before the universe ends.
• This is more or less the Central Theme of Grendel. In life, Hunter Rose is zilch more than a somewhat above-average criminal wearing a mask. In death, events converge to gradually transform his supervillain persona into the founding principle and guiding philosophy of a mighty imperial dynasty that comes to dominate the entire globe. After a point, "Grendel" stops being a person and starts being an eternal, indestructible ideal.
• In one of the tie-ins to Night Nights: Death Metal (an event revolving around evil alternating versions of Batman), the Owlman, Batman's original evil indistinguishable from another universe, learns that he has died again and again in several alternate universes, which prompts his Heel–Face up Turn. As he pulls of a Heroic Sacrifice to kill the evil batmen, he gloats that they will all be forgotten with time. He, on the other, is immortal. No matter what the universe might be rebooted into, there will ever be an Owlman because he'south just that good an thought.
• This is kind of what Deadpool attempts in Deadpool Killustrated; having discovered that killing the Marvel Universe doesn't really achieve annihilation, he's now going through classic literature killing the archetypes that the Marvel heroes are based on, in the hope of killing the idea of the Curiosity Universe.

    Comic Strips

• The Phantom: Become ahead, try to kill him. Yous might succeed, it won't help.

    Fan Works

• Evil example done in the prologue to Shadowchasers: Conspiracy; in a flashback set in 1945 during the siege of Berlin, an American Attorney named Anderson Steading and two others have cornered a Nazi officer who is, in reality, an illithid.

  Steading: I'm not warning you again. As of this moment, I'g no more than impressed by the championship of 'Fuhrer' than I am of the powerless weakling an illithid is when it can't apply its psychic powers. Now put your slimy hands upward or I swear I'll send you to Hell to run across him.

  Illithid: I don't care… No affair how many of us you pigs kill… (draws a knife) …y'all tin can't kill an idea!

• Another evil example in Kill Them All. Samael boasts that it cannot be killed as the mere idea of its being will ensure it can manifest again by feeding on humanity's primal fears. Taylor then subverts this by pointing out you tin can kill an thought if you're willing to kill anybody who shares the idea or, as she after does, make everyone realize the idea itself is wrong.

    Films — Live-Activity

• The Dark Knight Trilogy:
  • Bruce Wayne uses this sort of reasoning when devising his future role in Batman Begins, as advised by Henri Ducard. A man acting just by himself every bit a man can be killed, bribed, or discouraged, just past becoming a 'symbol', the man becomes "more than only a human"; even if he dies, the symbol lives on to inspire others. Estimate what symbol Bruce eventually settles on... And information technology's heavily unsaid that Ra's Al Ghul has operated by the same principle.
  • It plays out again in The Dark Knight Rises. Bruce Wayne fakes Batman's decease and retires from superhero-ing, merely he leaves the keys to the Bat Cave with detective John "Robin" Blake, so Blake tin can exist the hero that Gotham needs.
• In Casablanca, Victor Lazslo tries to assert this about La Résistance confronting the Nazis. The film itself does a good job of illustrating the concept. Unfortunately, Those Wacky Nazis also accept ideas and ones that Lazlo is kinda, you know, trying to kill.
• Played with in Dogma, where Rufus comments that "ideas" are malleable and tin change and possibly even die out. "Beliefs," which are strengthened ideas, are much harder to even modify, let lonely kill. It also places a spin on it in that the fact that a belief is hard to 'kill' is not necessarily a good thing if the conventionalities is not a good 1, or if the belief has become an overly rigid dogma.
• Inception addresses this and emphasizes why it is so hard to constitute 1. The title refers to the act of doing so, only the master obstruction is that the subject area has to believe information technology's their ain idea for it to stick. The side by side complexity is that the idea will abound to define their entire life... even to suicidal extremes.
• V for Vendetta had an epic one near the terminate. Afterward taking dozens of bullets and killing a dozen men earlier they could finish reloading (every bit per his Badass Boast), V approaches The Dragon-in-Chief, who asks, in disbelief, "Why Won't You Die?!" His response? "Beneath this mask is more than flesh; beneath this mask, in that location is an idea, Mister Creedy — and ideas. Are. Bulletproof." The literal bullet proof vest helped, if merely for a while; he died shortly thereafter to his wounds.
• Braveheart: William Wallace, right after beingness racked, stretched by horses, and disemboweled, defiantly yells "FREEEEDOOOOOOMMM!"
• The Matrix features this trope quite heavily. The idea that the homo mind cannot truly function without a real option plays into the design of the Matrix itself and the bike of the One as a means for the machines to go on the human population under control. The entire trilogy revolves around breaking this command for true freedom.
• Equilibrium: "A heavy cost. I pay it gladly." Partridge refuses to give in to Preston, deconstructing the significant of a system without emotion. Being enlightened that he has just committed a sense offence, he faces death in the most composed way possible as a grade of his disobedience, because he'd rather die for his beliefs than be committed to a corrupted establishment. Fair to say, his words keep to reverberate as Preston unravels the truth and the Resistance gain a chance to seep through.
• Iron Homo:
  • Iron Human being uses a villainous version. Information technology'south one thing if yous want your idea to spread and inspire people, but what if yous want to keep your idea—similar, say, the key to Powered Armor—to yourself to avoid it being abused?

    Stane: Yous think that just because you have an idea, it belongs to you?

  • Iron Human being 2 confirms this. Iron Man'southward existence made the whole earth realize that Powered Armor is a viable and powerful weapon. Tony initially downplays the problem considering he's 1 of the simply people who can actually make a reliable adapt. Unfortunately, the villain of the movie is also smart enough to make his own conform, and he's got a grudge against Tony.
  • Vanko believes he has killed an idea, having attacked (and virtually killed) Tony. The idea, specifically, being that Atomic number 26 Man can't be browbeaten; "If yous could brand God bleed, people would stop to believe in Him. At that place will be blood in the water, the sharks will come up. All I have to do is sit back and watch as the world consumes you." He's kind of right, and much of Tony's Graphic symbol Arc in the later MCU films demonstrate his increasing inability to keep things from spinning out of control despite his best intentions.
• The Hunger Games: Mockingjay has Katniss telling president Snowfall that the rebellion will never submit to him, regardless of his atrocities. In that location are also scenes where this promise of Katniss get validated by many impressive heroic sacrifices.

  Katniss: "You can torture u.s.a.. You tin flop us. You can burn our districts to the ground. But do yous see that? Burn is catching! If we burn, you lot burn with us!"

• The Bad Future in Ten-Men: Days of Future Past is prepare off past Mystique killing Trask, since he was the head of the Sentinel program. Killing him simply convinced others to go on his piece of work and the futurity happened. When it comes down to it, the aesop is that you cannot impale an thought, but must ignominy it. The changed occurs when she spares him and saves the President. Trask instead gets arrested for trying to sell armed forces secrets to the North Vietnamese government at the Paris Peace Accordance, causing the program to be shelved.
• Ben-Hur (1959). Messala takes command of the Jerusalem Garrison and has this substitution with the former commander Sextus. "Yes Messala only how do you control what'south up here? (points to his head) How do you fight an idea? Especially a new idea." Afterwards, Messala has a response to this trope. "Sextus, you asked how to "fight an thought". Well I'll tell you how... With another idea."
• In And Repose Flows the Don, Podtyolkou the Bolshevik says this right before his execution, telling the crowd that they'll be sorry later on and that all Russia will be Bolshevik.
• Expressionless Poets Society: While Mr. Keating gets fired over supposedly causing Neil's expiry, he leaves knowing that the teachings he imparted will stay with his students, as the formerly timid Todd stands up on his desk to salute Keating, prompting his fellow club members (and fifty-fifty some other students) to besides accept a stand up in defiance of Dean Nolan'south demands that they stay seated. As the students stand, Nolan's vocalisation gets drowned out in the swelling score, which leads Keating to say "Thank you, boys. Thank you." as he leaves.

    Literature

• Played for Laughs in Discworld novels on several occasions, frequently with people using rumors that one time they get started can not be stopped. In Interesting Times, for example, Rincewind goes around telling soldiers that in no way are in that location any invisible vampire ghosts about to assault them in the following boxing and at that place are ''absolutely non'' ii,300,009 of them.
  • Of course, Discworld takes it literally many times. Witches Abroad introduces the thought that on the Discworld, stories accept not only memetic influence just are a constabulary of nature. In Soul Music and Moving Pictures, the immortal idea (rock music and movies, respectively) is the Large Bad.
  • In Thief of Time the Glass Clock, which destroyed all of history in the by, was removed from whatsoever books by the History Monks, but something that potent all the same seeped through and constitute its mode into children's stories.
• Belisarius Series: Used first seriously and then humorously. Belisarius starts a rumor about sexual prowess and general horniness of the Kushans in order to get Kungas and his men pulled away from their guard duty of a captured princess. Their incompetent replacements are hands dispatched and allow her to exist rescued. Subsequently, once the confused Kushans find out nearly the origin of the rumor, they then have delight in spreading it themselves.
• The Dresden Files subverts this idea. The Oblivion War is an ancient ongoing state of war against quondam malevolent gods and demons who now are remembered only by a scant few mortals. If those mortals die and all records of the god are destroyed, and no one is there to take upward remembering the name, and so the leader of the humanity's faction can fully delete the god and data near the god from the last possible source on Earth. This and then banishes the god to oblivion. I advantage for the gods' factions is fifty-fifty adventitious knowledge of the god is enough to make a binding. So, if one put the name of a god on Twitter and tweeted it to 10 people, they would become binds to the mortal realm. They would need to die before the human being's leader could human activity. Thankfully, Humanity's leader is patient enough to wait a thousand years to really make sure all records and noesis are destroyed, and then waiting a hundred years for these mortals to die is okay as long as they don't start spreading the name farther and become liabilities or agents of the god. Ane saving grace of the limits to knowing this is the gods must be known by a mortal beingness. If a spirit of knowledge learns of the War or a god'southward name, it won't get a necktie to the world. The novella Backup goes into a bit of item near The Oblivion War where a side character who participates backside the main hero Harry Dresden's back. We don't get a lot of information, but since the antagonist is a cultist of said gods, and Thomas (the novella protagonist) mentioned the war has been ongoing for thousands of years, it fits. Information technology is said in the novella, Humanity'southward side cannot even know how many victories and banishes they have made considering even that could hazard some of the defeated enemies a chance to come back. ^note As an interesting side annotation, in that location is zero mention of the Oblivion War in any of the main series novels, even though, co-ordinate to Word of God, Thomas has been actively participating in it since the outset of the series (and before), specifically considering Thomas does non desire to and cannot allow Harry know anything about information technology: since the chief serial is told in Beginning Person, the reader simply knows what Harry knows. There are very subtle hints in the stories, but they have no connecting thread without the context of Backup.
• In the Eighth Doctor Adventures, a group of Time Lords (the Celestis) accept this concept literally, and catechumen themselves into ideas for this very reason. Unfortunately for them, a subsequently book reveals that the Whoniverse also contains creatures which can kill—and eat—ideas.
  • The heavily associated spin-off Faction Paradox basically is this trope.
• This is the crux of Kelsier's Thanatos Gambit in Mistborn. He purports himself equally a figure of legend and a symbol of development so that when he is killed, a vengeful organized religion rises up immediately to complete his work in his proper noun.
• In Fatherland (rephrased): "Cutting a immigration in the forest of your listen, the copse are just waiting to reoccupy it."
• Invoked in Secret City:

  Eligor: You cannot impale an thought!
  Santyaga: Yes. Nosotros adopt to exterminate those who carry them. [stabs him]

• In It Tin can't Happen Here, the totalitarian government never completely stamps out people's longing for freedom and nobility. Revolts erupt beyond America as people take back areas from Haik'south forces. Doremus, in particular, exemplifies this trope, continuing the struggle after having lost loved ones, endured torture and incarceration, and lived in lonely exile.

  And even so Doremus goes on in the ruby-red sunrise, for a Doremus Jessup tin never die.

• The Stormlight Archive:
  • Spren are living ideas. The more common ones are things similar current of air and rot and acrimony, but more than powerful and intelligent ones are spirits of laurels and lies and law. Usually, killing any of these is essentially impossible, just at that place is 1 fashion to impale them on an individual level: When they bond with a human (which grants that person special powers), the spren gains the ability to maintain their sentience in the Physical Realm, just they likewise get vulnerable. If the human being does not hold to their oaths (the precise oath varies depending on the spren), the spren will weaken and somewhen lose their sentience. Actively breaking their oaths will actually impale the spren. They can be brought back if the homo re-swears their oaths.
  • The spren who were bonded to the old Knights Radiant were all killed during the Recreance when all the knights broke their oaths at in one case. Since the spen were likewise their Shardblades, they were locked in that form when they died, and the kingdoms of the world accept been using the corpses of spren as the most dangerous and valuable objects for millennia. A non-Radiant can bond with a Blade, giving the spren a simulacrum of life for a moment (enough to exist summoned and dismissed at will), merely no more. Truly bringing them back to life has been implied to be possible but very difficult, as their original bonded knights are long dead. According to Word of God, it would non only crave a wielder of the dead blade to swear the oaths of the lodge of the Knights Radiant the spren was associated with but something more to forge a new bond with the spren and heal their mostly destroyed minds..
• "Gift" by Philip K. Dick. Everyone on Williamson's World is killed, just one of the people involved brings some trinkets from information technology home and gives them to his son, and the story ends with the son looking at them with "a foreign light in his eyes".
• The Star Wars Expanded Universe will never be rid of the Mandalorians, why? Well, in the words of Mandalore the destroyer:

  "Here'southward why you can't exterminate united states, aruetii ^note refers to someone not Mandalorian, or traitors. . Nosotros're not huddled in one place—we span the galaxy. We need no lords or leaders—so you lot tin't destroy our command. We can live without technology—then we can fight with our blank hands. We have no species or bloodline—so we can rebuild our ranks with others who want to bring together usa. We're more merely a people or an army, aruetii. Nosotros're a culture. We're an idea. And y'all tin't kill ideas—just nosotros tin can certainly impale you."

    Alive-Action Boob tube

• In Babylon 5, at the climax of the Vorlon-Shadow War Delenn and Sheridan indicate out that, even if they and their coalition are killed, their exclamation that the younger races no longer need the First Ones is true. All the Outset Ones can do is subjugate them, non "teach" them every bit the two sides insist they want to.
• On The Daily Testify, Mo Rocca suggested that to adequately fight the War on Terror, what America needs is "a flop that destroys ideas".
• Physician Who:
  • "The Christmas Invasion": The Medico was able to destroy a prime minister with this trope. He but needed to say six words to an adjutant. "Don't you call back she looks tired?" She doesn't die (quite the opposite, really), and the PM isn't necessarily evil, but he does use the principle of an idea beingness unkillable. He certainly comes to regret this.
  • "The Satan Pit": The Doctor references the trope when he confronts the Animate being's body and realizes information technology'south an Empty Vanquish, with the Beast attempting to escape by sending its mind away within someone. While the heed may non be as powerful equally it would be within its ain body, information technology could notwithstanding spread the evil throughout the universe, knowing how hard it is to defeat an idea.
  • "Rosa": The antagonist, a Politically Incorrect Villain from the far future, is trying to kill an idea past derailing the American Civil Rights Movement. He tin't literally kill anyone due to a Restraining Bolt, and then he has to resort to other methods, while the Doctor and company piece of work to stop him.
• Discussed in a NOVA episode on radicalization, "15 Years of Terror". I of the interviewees points out that the simply matter that kills a bad thought is a better thought.
• This is how Gotham treated Jerome and Jeremiah Valeska. Since the showrunners were forbidden to employ "The Joker" name by Warner Bros,, the testify sets up the thought that Jerome comes up; with the archaic style, the smiling and other Joker-identifiers, but when he dies, Jeremiah unwillingly takes up the curtain, making sure Jerome's ideas of wreaking havok is continued in Gotham while the one-time is expressionless.
• In The Outer Limits (1995)'southward episode "Terminal Exam", this trope is discussed in relation to the moral and environmental implications behind cold fusion bombs and the advance of applied science overall. When Martin questions how Todtman reached his quantum with cold fusion technology earlier the HereWeGoAgain ending in a unlike university implies the same scenario will take identify :

  Todtman: So elementary once they ask the right question, only they're expecting the wrong answer.

• Sherlock:
  • In the episode, "The Reichenbach Fall", Donovan and Anderson manage to sow the seeds of doubt regarding Sherlock's authenticity as a (relatively) candid detective. When Lestrade comes to warn Sherlock of his impending arrest:

    Sherlock: Later all, you can't impale an idea, can you lot? Not once information technology's fabricated a habitation... (Taps Lestrade's forehead) There.

  • That'south the whole point of the episode, with Moriarty managing to convince everybody that Sherlock is a fraud and that even "Moriarty" is a paid player hired past Sherlock. He proves it past killing himself, forcing Sherlock to jump from a rooftop lest all his friends die.
  • This is then reversed in the "The Empty Hearse" which shows that given enough fourth dimension, cooler heads were able to re-examine the subject and institute major faults in the original theory. Once discredited, the idea quickly dies off and when Sherlock is revealed to be still alive, the public embraces him one time once again as a hero.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation:
  • "Rightful Heir": Chancellor Gowron talks about the symbolic effect of the render of the Klingon God-Emperor.

    Gowron: Kahless has been dead for a thousand years, but the idea of Kahless is still alive. Have you ever fought an thought, Picard? Information technology has no weapon to destroy, no trunk to kill.

    • Later in the episode, the same statement is used to convince Gowron to let Kahless be a figurehead Emperor rather than oppose him. When a counter that this Kahless is a clone is made, Worf points out that it won't matter to a good number of Klingons, who volition still come across him as a reincarnation of the original's spirit/ideals, and would just issue in fracturing the Empire if opposed. Gowron is forced to, reluctantly, kneel before Kahless (even though Gowron is even so in accuse).
  • In the 2-part episode "Birthright", Worf discovers a Romulan prison army camp where Klingons and Romulans take learned to live together in peace. All the same, he finds that the Klingon children are not informed about their heritage. The Romulan leader, Tokath, finds him a threat to this peace and demands that Worf stop or else he'll get executed. Worf tells him he is content to Face Death with Dignity for this reason.

    Worf: I am being executed considering I brought something dangerous to your immature people. Knowledge. Noesis of their origins. Knowledge of the existent reasons you are here in this army camp. The truth is a threat to yous.

• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: "Far Across the Stars". Benjamin Sisko, dreaming that he's a science fiction writer in the 50s, reacts rather badly to having his story pulped because information technology has a black Captain.

  Sisko: You can deny me all you desire merely you can't deny Ben Sisko — he exists! That future, that space station, all those people — they exist in here! In my mind. I created it. And every one of you knew it, you lot read it. It's here. Do you hear what I'm telling you? You tin pulp a story, but you cannot destroy an idea, don't you sympathize, that'south ancient knowledge, you cannot destroy an idea. That time to come — I created it, and it's real! Don't you understand? It is real. I created it. And it'southward existent! It'south real!

• The Twilight Zone (1959):
  • The episode "He's Alive" has it work for both good and bad. After Peter betrays his quondam friend Ernst and shoots him, Ernst warns him that the ideas he fought for - equality, freedom and justice - will not die by a single bullet. At the end, when Peter dies, his spirit advisor Hitler returns to the shadows to detect another to guide. Rod Sterling and then warns the audition that the ideas that Hilter fought for — oppression, hatred and prejudice — are as well ideas that will exist so long as people continue to permit them to.
  • "The Obsolete Human" deals with a man named Romney Wordsworth. He lives in a dystopian futurity where everything must take a purpose and able to fulfill that purpose or else The Land shall declare the person Obsolete and remove the person. If the person'southward purpose is similarly declared Obsolete, then that too will carry the same punishment. Among the many things The State alleged Obsolete is Religion. Not just Christianity, though that is Romney's faith likewise. Even stating this during his trial on whether he is Obsolete or not earns a feiry declaration from the Chancellor that there is no God considering The State proved there is no God. In reference to this trope, Romney declares, "You cannot erase God with an edict." And in a like vein, afterward he is declared Obsolete and sentenced to die, Romney crafts a plan to implant more than than a few dangerous ideas into the audition his execution will be broadcasted to. Romney has a bomb set upwardly in his apartment and invites the Chancellor to his place, with the subsequently beingness ignorant to how Romney volition dice. Once inside, Romney locks the door and poses a challenge of faiths to the Chancellor; his in the unbending power of The State and Romney's in God. For the next half hour as the fourth dimension of the explosion draws about, Romney reads aloud from his Bible passages not just for his ain forcefulness merely passages that those watching can detect strength in to further resist. The Chancellor, knowing his people won't openly save him every bit it would be a sign of weakness, breaks on boob tube and screams in the name of God to exist permit out. In God'south Name, Romney unlocks the door simply remains inside as the explosion kills him. The next twenty-four hour period, for his disgraceful actions the Chancellor is now declared Obsolete and taken abroad by a horde to exist killed.

    Mythology and Faith

• Rather epically summarized by Odin during Ragnarök:

  Old Norse: Deyr fé, deja frændr, deyr sjalfr it sama, en orðstírr deyr aldregi, hveim er sér góðan getr.

  Norwegian: Fe dør, frende dør, en sjøl dør på samme vis; men ordets glans skal aldri dø i ærefullt ettermæle

  English: Cattle die, kinsmen die, we ourselves also die; but the fair fame never dies of him who has earned it.

    Music

• Peter Gabriel invokes this trope in the vocal "Biko", a tribute to South African martyr Steven Biko, with following lyric:

  "You lot can accident out a candle, but yous can't blow out a fire,
  In one case the flames begin to catch, the wind will blow information technology higher."

• The point of the song "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night", as recorded past Paul Robeson, Joan Baez, and others.
• German folk song "Dice Gedanken sind frei" ("Thoughts are free") is all about this. Sophie Scholl, a member of the White Rose, famously played the song on her flute outside the walls of Ulm prison in 1942, where her father Robert had been detained for calling Hitler a scourge of God.
• The Aviators song "Impenetrable" is all near this: "Y'all can shoot me downwardly, merely you're never gonna hibernate the truth / 'Crusade words are impenetrable."
• The Abolitionist song "John Brown'due south Body" has this every bit it's primal theme. John Brown was fed up with the movement's attempts to peacefully end slavery in the U.S. and tried to start a slave rebellion in Virginia, which ended in his arrest and eventual hanging for treason (the first person convicted of the crime in the U.S.). John Dark-brown'south raid of the federal arsenal in Harper'south Ferry, Virginia (today Westward Virginia) occured less then ii years before the start of the American Ceremonious War. In fact, the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" was set to the tune of this song.

  Quondam John Brown'south body lies moldering in the grave,

  While weep the sons of bondage whom he ventured all to save;

  But tho he lost his life while struggling for the slave,

  His soul is marching on.

    Tabletop Games

• One of the Madness talents in Don't Lose Your Mind grants you a knife that tin can cut, sever or kill anything, including ideas. There'southward ever a ritual quality to such an act — dubbed memeticide — for instance, slitting Fidel Castro's pharynx would kill the idea of Communism in Cuba, meaning the idea not only gets forgotten but loses all momentum and will never exist taken seriously anymore. That being said, the pocketknife can also cut off flaws, sever calumniating relationships, and kill personal demons.
• Mage: The Awakening: Inverted — you quite literally can go into the collective Dream Land of humanity's subconscious, notice the apotheosis of an thought, and kill information technology. The most powerful archmages can snuff out a concept from every listen on Globe in this style.
• Mage: The Ascension inverts it too. This from the Revised Void Engineer splatbook: One Deviant told me that I could take his life, merely I could never kill his dreams. This was wrong. The standard protocol for killing an RD's dreams requires 2 sniper/spotter teams with Primium hypervelocity weapon loads, and an officer operating a hyperdimensional field generator. Let's do now.

    Theatre

• The New Moon: In the Finale Act I, afterwards the masks come off and Robert is captured:

  Ribaud: So, Monsieur Beaunoir, the sooner your ship can set canvas, the sooner we can treat Paris to a virtually amusing execution.
  Robert (as men sing "Stouthearted Men" offstage): All right, Ribaud, you take won, but long after my amusing execution something will live afterwards me. Listen! You hear that—that song, that spirit will destroy you and your king, and all the cruelty yous stand for!

    Video Games

• Assassin'southward Creed:
  • In Assassin's Creed, Altaïr found out the hard way that the Knights Templar are not but Crusaders. They tin can too be Saracens and fifty-fifty Assassins as well, like his mentor, Al Mualim. As long as in that location are people who believe the world must exist controlled in order for there to exist peace, the Templar Guild will never be rid of.
  • In Assassin's Creed Two, 1 of the Codex pages reveals that Altaïr mused on this subject area more than once, noting that the Templars waged war past seeking to win over the hearts and minds of people with ideas, rather than more conventional weapons. This fabricated information technology rather difficult for the Assassins to fight back... Only it also makes it rather hard for the Templars to exterminate them.

    Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad ...how does one wage war against a concept? Information technology is the perfect weapon. It lacks a concrete form all the same tin modify the earth around united states in numerous, often tearing means. Yous cannot kill a creed. Even if you kill all of its adherents, destroy all of its writings – these are a reprieve at best. Someone, someday, will rediscover information technology. Reinvent it. I believe that even nosotros, the Assassins, have simply re-discovered an Social club that predates the Onetime Man himself...

  • Exaggerated in Assassin'due south Creed III by Haytham Kenway when fighting Connor; while the Assassins are literally built-in of lifetimes of discipline and self-report, the Templars grow like weeds no matter what the Assassins do considering Evil Is Easy and Evil Pays Better. The Templars are even more resilient than the Assassins because they're not fifty-fifty an idea—they're the absence of one.

    Haytham: Even when your kind appears to triumph, yet, we rise again. And, practise you lot know why? It is because the Order is born of a realization. Nosotros require no creed! No indoctrination by drastic old men. All we need is that the world exist as it is. And this is why the Templars will never exist destroyed!

  • Said word-for-word in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey: Legacy of the Start Bract by Amorges about the Order of the Ancients, the precursors of the Knights Templar:

    Amorges: The Order aren't just a grouping of people - they're an idea. And idea cannot be beaten. And thought cannot be destroyed.

• Invoked in Deus Ex when the terrorist leader says 'You can't fight ideas with bullets'. A running theme throughout the game. "A single creative person, a single general, a unmarried hero or a single villain may all die, merely information technology is impossible to kill a people, a nation, an idea—except when that idea has grown weak and is overpowered by one that is stronger." —The Doctrine of the Mighty
• In MadWorld, XIII says that he wants to encounter an idea die. A culture. A religion. Whatever idea. He got his wish. The Blood Sport Deathwatch is dead.
• Knights of the Old Democracy II: The Sith Lords: This is one of Kreia'southward favorite tropes. She points out that killing men is easier than killing belief and that Revan, in the procedure of fighting the Mandalorians, adopted Mandalorian tactics and their intolerance for the "weak." She also points out that every time the Jedi and Sith fight each other to nigh-extinction, the ethics of either side notwithstanding remain every bit strong equally ever, waiting for their take chances to strike back in revenge and dooming the milky way to countless warfare.
  • Subverted with Kreia herself. Not existence the almost social woman, her worldview ultimately died with her, since the only person she bothered instruction it to didn't share it (plus she had a nasty habit of killing those to whom she preached). No other character in the Star Wars universe ever expresses the same view on the Strength ever over again.
• Tactics Ogre:

  Sisteena: If yous want to impale me, get ahead. I may die simply my ideals will live on!

• The Victoria Games by Paradox Interactive, spanning from the early 19th century (specifically, 1836) to right before Globe War II has this in the game-play where your population volition become empty-headed ideas such every bit minimum wages and universal suffrage on their minds. Starting revolts if the pressure level of having plenty people saying they desire it isn't enough.
  • Victoria 2 adds a suppression mechanic to stop ideas you find dangerous. All the same, it is a temporary reprieve—the suppressed movement will virtually probable show up again later a few years and exist more radical and inclined to violence.
• In Metal Gear Solid 2 the main bad guys The Patriots invoke this trope to justify why they will always exist. They (through their AI programmed to talk to Raiden) explain to Raiden that they are the very moral and intellectual consciousness of the Usa of America, every idea that comes into the collective consciousness of each American citizen originates from them. You can't kill the Patriots every bit an organization because they aren't simply a business that can be shut down just an thought in and of itself.
• In Mass Event 3 the Illusive Man cites this trope as the reason Cerberus will never autumn, even with their headquarters in ruins and their forces scattered.
• Invoked in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim by Ulfric Stormcloak. Partially subverted if y'all complete the Royal Legion questline, every bit while at that place would still exist holdouts, near would eventually lay down their arms and return to their homes.
• Cruelly subverted past Sylvanas Windrunner in her Warbringers short in Globe of Warcraft. The Horde has just attacked Darkshore and is virtually to capture Teldrassil, the Night Elves' home. Conversing with Delaryn Summermoon, a Night Elf Sentinel who is dying from her wounds, Delaryn tells Sylvanas that she has made life itself her enemy, and that's a state of war she'll never win because she simply can't kill hope. Sylvanas coldly responds "Tin can't I?", turns Delaryn's head towards Teldrassil, and orders her soldiers to burn it downwardly. ^annotation Sylvanas had too planned to impale Malfurion Stormrage to demoralize the Night Elves, and when Loftier Overlord Saurfang strikes Malfurion from behind and renders him unconscious, Sylvanas leaves to oversee Teldrassil's capture, ordering Saurfang to bring her Malfurion'due south head. Saurfang, however, refuses to kill him since his back was turned when Saurfang attacked. This allows Tyrande Whisperwind to swoop in and rescue Malfurion, leading Sylvanas to detect that Malfurion is all the same alive and doing the next best thing.

    Webcomics

• Remus Shepard had a go at this in Indefensible Positions, then deconstructed it in Genocide Man. In the former ideas are actually living creatures known every bit demons, but are dependent on belief from humans to survive. However, the protagonist of the latter argues that an idea can be killed and that some ideas should be killed—even if the only way to do so is to slaughter every single person who holds the thought.

  Jacob: Your threat comes from what you represent — the idea that man beings tin be improved or replaced. Ideas like that are as well dangerous to let live. The open source motility gave every idea an army of researchers. They turned military secrets into public noesis, and children's scientific discipline kits into biowarfare labs. That's how the Jews became extinct, why China is total of zombies, and why red hair became a capital punishment. Two-thirds of the world's population died because of discrimination, insanity, or ancestral hatred. Because of ideas. There's simply i way to kill an thought. You accept to kill every person who holds it. Genocide is the reply, the antithesis of every thought. Today'southward ideas are dangerous plenty to threaten the entire human race. That's why genocide is at present constabulary enforcement's number one tool. (Emphasis added).

    Web Original

• SCP Foundation: "Tell me, little daughter, how does one kill an idea?" "With better ideas." Unfortunately for the good guys, their get-go pick was the incorrect one. WILD LIGHT finally finds that improve thought.

    Western Animation

• Parodied in Futurama:

  Old Man Waterfall: You tin crush me but yous can't trounce my spirit!
  (A behemothic hook crushes him)
  Old Human being Waterfall: Ow! My spirit!

• A villainous example from the finale of Star vs. the Forces of Evil: After Mina Loveberry and her genocidal army are de-powered, most of the heroes let her leave out of compassion, except for an anonymous archer who only shoots her. The first shot fails to connect, and Mina convinces her (in her unique words) that it wouldn't matter if she succeeded.

  Mina: You lot can get rid of me. It'south so easy. But the sweet thing is, I'll never really be gone, 'cause I've got skillful ideas. And the thing virtually good ideas is they tend to kinda hang around, like a baaad fart.

    Real Life

• The whole footing for The Game.
• Che Guevara'south terminal words, co-ordinate to at least ane biography:

  I know you lot have come up to kill. Impale me if you wish, coward, but know that yous tin can only kill a man.

• There were several sects of early Christians that are simply known about by official church building writings condemning them. In some cases, we but have the names and there must take been others where even that hasn't survived. Of course, since we don't know what their ideas were it is impossible to say whether those ideas were killed, captivated by the Catholic Church or recycled by improve-known groups. (That'southward a cherry herring, as many of those ideas would take had to also have been "absorbed" past the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, and the Oriental Orthodox Church)
• In a 2001 volume of "Quotations for Public Speakers", the US ex-senator Robert Toricelli almost certainly incorrectly claimed that Josef Stalin had said:

  Ideas are more than powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we allow them have ideas?

• Government propaganda targeted at an enemy intentionally invokes this trope, specially during wartime.
• Opponents of The State of war on Terror and War On Drugs invoke this trope as one of their points.
• Generally, exterior attempts to forcibly repress or destroy an idea are doomed to fail, only ideas can destroy themselves if they inspire widespread revulsion and their practitioners are doing horrible things.
• A legal punishment in ancient Rome was damnatio memoriae , which was an attempt to erase a political figure completely from history after his or her death. Their faces would be removed from portraits, statues damaged, and annihilation mentioning their name would be destroyed or erased. This is extremely hard to pull off completely — for instance, we have some surviving busts of Publius Septimius Geta, denarii featuring his image, and a wealth of data nigh his personality, tastes, family politics, and eventual bump-off — and plainly, information technology'due south impossible to know if a complete damnatio memoriae ever occurred.
  • Maybe an aboriginal example of the Streisand Event.
  • The Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose 3 tried to erase his predecessor Hatshepsut from history by destroying monuments and substantially painting over hieroglyph murals. The fact that information technology was his mother, who had led Egypt in a Gilt Historic period (of admittedly strict dominion), is just icing on the historical record cake. Oddly enough, he mostly succeeded, every bit the records that were destroyed have just recently been restored (partially) with advanced technology, and obviously missing some rather significant gaps.
• A saying from the Norse Poetic Edda, attributed to Odin:

  Cattle die, kinsmen die, nosotros ourselves also dice, only the fair fame never dies of him who has earned information technology.

• A similar saying to this trope is utilized in the Occupy protests, by the slogan "You cannot adios an idea". Peradventure a subversion, given that Occupy got stuck with the reputation of being a bunch of rich kids trying to convince the poor they were one and the same, a case of an idea eating itself. Withal, many of the ideas of the Occupy move accept been captivated into the ascension of the Democratic Socialist motility in the 2018 ballot cycle, which has too expanded on the concepts to apply the ideas to things across merely banks.
• Tommy Douglas, onetime premier of Saskatchewan and founding leader of the New Democratic Party, ended his "Mouseland" parable as such:

  But I want to remind yous: that you tin can lock upwards a mouse or a man but you tin't lock up an idea.

• 2012 Presidential Candidate Ron Paul has stated this virtually his ideas:

  "Ideas spread, you can't stop them. An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any regular army or any authorities!"

• Blackness Panther Fred Hampton in one case said that "You can impale the revolutionary, only you tin't kill the revolution."
  • Subverted in a photo of policemen carrying his body out after the siege of Chicago with the byline "You can't kill a revolution but you lot sure as hell can kill a revolutionary".
• Plato was a pioneer of this trope. His philosophizing posited 'forms' existing independently of the existent world, i.due east. every chair may look dissimilar, but we recognize them as 'a chair' considering they all reverberate the form of the eternal chair. Hence, mankind volition never forget how to brand chairs considering the idea exists separately from any one man. Things like 'justice', 'virtue', and 'goodness' were also forms. In his 'Republic', the leaders communed with 'the Form of the Practiced' and embodied it completely.
  • 2 and a one-half millennia later on, Carl Jung would adopt Plato's ideas for his theory of "archetypes", that every person is hardwired with mythological symbols that manifest in their myths and religions, while some other Carl—Sagan—would savage Plato for the rising of religious dogma, past championing the supremacy of the mind over the science of the 'decadent' natural earth.
• This trope is 1 of the chief reasons why many people (often Sci-Fi writers) believe that going back in time to impale Hitler wouldn't forbid the Holocaust or Globe War 2; once his sick ideas were planted in the minds of the Nazis, someone else (perhaps even crazier—or worse, more competent—than he was) would take continued his work if he was assassinated. Likewise, even if Hitler didn't come into power and lead the Nazi Party, racism, anti-Semitism, ableism, homophobia, etc. existed centuries before he was born, and live on to this twenty-four hour period. It wouldn't exist a stretch to assume that if Hitler didn't stir up the prejudices of the 1930s High german public in order to become political back up, someone else would take done so.
• Speaking of Nazis, people who oppose anti-detest oral communication laws and other policies aimed at directly suppressing detest groups cite this trope as one of the reasons why they believe they would be ineffective. You can throw them in jail or silence them publicly, but people won't end being racist simply because someone tells them they tin can't be, or so the theory goes.
• Proponents of free oral communication in general often cite like sentiments. Trying to impale an idea is usually not only futile, it tin ofttimes imbue that idea with an allure information technology might not accept otherwise had, particularly if propaganda condemning information technology is flawed enough. Trying to outlaw in idea besides kills whatever criticisms of that idea, oft more finer than the original target.
• This trope is the reason behind Thoughtcrime policies: because an idea resides in the mind of the individual, it tin only be quelled if they themselves suppress it.
• Some minority rights movements take adopted the phrase "rest in ability" to betoken that the death of a persecuted individual can empower others to go on fighting persecution.
• Domingo Faustino Sarmiento escaped from Argentina to Chile, during the dictatorship of Juan Manuel de Rosas. Before leaving, he wrote "Barbarians, ideas cannot exist killed" in a big rock. He worked against Rosas during his exile and became president of Argentina years later when Rosas had long been defeated and gone.
• Shortly earlier his assassination, Thomas Sankara, the President of Burkina Faso, said:

  "While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas."

• Earlier she was executed by the Nazi Frg government in 1943, Sophie Scholl of the Weiße Rose resistance group said: "Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to become... What does my death matter, if through the states, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?".
• A unique application of this trope was a gun control protest past Phillip A. Luty, who designed an SMG using purely general-purpose materials and equipment. His assertion was that banning firearms was useless since all y'all needed to obtain one was mere noesis of firearm mechanics, which could non exist banned. Forgotten Weapons goes into detail here.

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YouCanNotKillAnIdea

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