Motivational Quotes

Ideas

The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.

- Alfred North Whitehead

Best Quotes about Ideas

To have a great idea, have a lot of them.

Edison, Thomas A.

Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things.

Dogen

In Texas, years ago, almost all of the oil came from surface operations. Then someone got the idea that there were greater sources of supply deeper down. A well was drilled five thousand feet deep. The result? A gusher. Too many of us operate on the surface. We never go deep enough to find supernatural resources. The result is, we never operate at our best. More time and investment is involved to go deep but a gusher will pay off.

Montapert, Alfred A.

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

John Cage

It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.

Anatole France

It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

We are not to make the ideas of contentment and aspiration quarrel, for God made them fast friends. A man may aspire, and yet be quite content until it is time to raise; and both flying and resting are but parts of one contentment. The very fruit of the gospel is aspiration. It is to the heart what spring is to the earth, making every root, and bud, and bough desire to be more. -

Beecher, Henry Ward

I'm not impressed with the power of a corporate president. I am impressed with the power of ideas.

Mason, Ken

A man is not necessarily intelligent because he has plenty of ideas, any more than he is a good general because he has plenty of soldiers.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

10.

People find ideas a bore because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf.

Pound, Ezra

11.

It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.

Oech, Roger Von

12.

He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.

Disraeli, Benjamin

13.

I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it.

Samuel Goldwyn

14.

If you want to get across an idea, wrap it up in a person.

Bunche, Ralph

15.

If you have the same ideas as everybody else but have them one week earlier than everyone else then you will be hailed as a visionary. But if you have them five years earlier you will be named a lunatic.

Jones, Barry

16.

Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.

Trotsky, Leon

17.

Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: (1) It's completely impossible. (2) It's possible, but it's not worth doing. (3) I said it was a good idea all along.

Clarke, Arthur C.

18.

The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

Pauling, Linus

19.

Ideas are invented only as correctives to the past. Through repeated rectification of this kind one may hope to disengage an idea that is valid.

Bachelard, Gaston

20.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

21.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

22.

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you only have one.

Chartier, Alain

23.

Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy.

Jim Hightower

24.

A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

25.

When an idea reaches critical mass there is no stopping the shift its presence will induce.

Williamson, Marianne

26.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

27.

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

28.

The point, simply, is that we are doing more rediscovering these days than discovering coming anew upon truths that ignorant people refused to examine, over the centuries, because the wise people who held custody of the fundamental truths of nature were unpopular.

Williamson, John

29.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

30.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

31.

An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.

Picasso, Pablo

32.

The ideas of a time are like the clothes of a season: they are as arbitrary, as much imposed by some superior will which is seldom explicit. They are utilitarian and political, the instruments of smooth-running government.

Lewis, Wyndham

33.

Such as take lodgings in a head that's to be let unfurnished.

Butler, Samuel

34.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

35.

Get your ideas on paper and study them. Do not let them go to waste!

Brown, Les

36.

So long as new ideas are created, sales will continue to reach new highs.

Brande, Dorothea

37.

Ideas are a capital that bears interest only in the hands of talent.

Rivarol, Antoine

38.

To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.

Rostand, Jean

39.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

40.

A new idea is like a child. It's easier to conceive than to deliver.

Koysis, Ted

41.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

42.

Think for thyself one good idea, but known to be thine own, is better than a thousand gleaned from fields by others sown.

Wilson, Alexander

43.

But how shall I get ideas? Keep your wits open! Observe! Observe! Study! Study! But above all, Think! Think! And when a noble image is indelibly impressed upon the mind -- Act!

Marden, Orison Swett

44.

There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who hate them.

Emile Chartier

45.

Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.

Harris, Sidney J.

46.

Lots of people know a good thing the minute the other fellow sees it first.

Hodges, Job E.

47.

There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man. --

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

48.

This is my answer to the gap between ideas and action - I will write it out.

Hortense Calisher

49.

It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

Keynes, John Maynard

50.

Our greatest lack is not money for any undertaking, but rather ideas, If the ideas are good, cash will somehow flow to where it is needed.

Schuller, Robert H.