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

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

Getting an idea should be like sitting down on a pin. It should make you jump up and do something.

Simpson, E. L.

It first appeared like a crazy idea. It turned out he had a great idea.

Munro, J. Richard

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

Not the one who has many ideas, but the one who has a single conviction may become a great person.

Cotvos

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

Butler, Samuel

Once I thought ideas were exceptions not the rule. That is not so. Ideas are so plentiful that they ride by on air. You've only to reach out and snatch one...

Mckeun, Rod

All opening moves were the same, like in chess. You don't have to come up with anything new, there's no point, because you're both after the same thing anyway. The game soon finds its own way and it's only at that point that you need a strategy.

Paolo Giordano

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

10.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

11.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

12.

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.

Hugo, Victor

13.

It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

14.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

15.

Brain cells create ideas. Stress kills brain cells. Stress is not a good idea.

Saunders, Richard

16.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

17.

It's very good for an idea to be commonplace. The important thing is that a new idea should develop out of what is already there so that it soon becomes an old acquaintance. Old acquaintances aren't by any means always welcome, but at least one can't be mistaken as to who or what they are.

Fitzgerald, Penelope

18.

Take the obvious, add a cupful of brains, a generous pinch of imagination, a bucketful of courage and daring, stir well and bring to a boil.

Baruch, Bernard M.

19.

A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it.

Proust, Marcel

20.

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

Rostand, Jean

21.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

22.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

23.

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

Emile Chartier

24.

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.

25.

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

26.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

27.

So many new ideas are at first strange and horrible, though ultimately valuable that a very heavy responsibility rests upon those who would prevent their dissemination.

J. B. S. Haldane

28.

A crank is someone with a new idea -- until it catches on.

Twain, Mark

29.

It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.

Canetti, Elias

30.

You have to hatch ideas -- and then hitch them.

Everson, Ray D.

31.

Ideas lose themselves as quickly as quail, and one must wing them the minute they rise out of the grass, or they are gone.

Kennedy, Thomas F.

32.

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

33.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

34.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

Walter Bagehot

35.

They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities.

Einstein, Albert

36.

Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.

Whitehead, Alfred North

37.

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

38.

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

Jim Hightower

39.

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

Victor Hugo

40.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

41.

Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

42.

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

Picasso, Pablo

43.

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wander whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

44.

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

45.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

46.

Mere words are cheap and plenty enough, but ideas that rouse and set multitudes thinking come as gold for the mines.

Penny, A. Owen

47.

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

48.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

49.

Go out and buy yourself a five-cent pencil and a ten-cent notebook and begin to write down some million-dollar ideas for yourself.

Grinde, Bob

50.

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

Keynes, John Maynard