Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Anatole France

Best Quotes about Ideas

The world moves, and ideas that were good once are not always good.

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

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

Hugo, Victor

There are well-dressed foolish ideas, just as there are will-dressed fools.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

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

Saunders, Richard

Ideas won't work unless you do.

A great idea is usually original to more than one discoverer. Great ideas come when the world needs them. Great ideas surround the world's ignorance and press for admission.

Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart

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

Samuel Goldwyn

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

10.

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

Everson, Ray D.

11.

A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.

Maritain, Jacques

12.

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

Twain, Mark

13.

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

Anatole France

14.

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

Hortense Calisher

15.

An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.

Frost, Robert

16.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

17.

It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.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

18.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

19.

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

Emile Chartier

20.

It's a pretty good idea to be of good cheer but not all the time. Just at the most unexpected times.

21.

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

22.

Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea.

Rohn, Jim

23.

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

24.

Ideas are powerful things, requiring not a studious contemplation but an action, even if it is only an inner action. Their acquisition obligates each man in some way to change his life, even if it is only his inner life. They demand to be stood for. They dictate where a man must concentrate his vision. They determine his moral and intellectual priorities. They provide him with allies and make him enemies. In short, ideas impose an interest in their ultimate fate which goes far beyond the realm of the merely reasonable.

Decter, Midge

25.

An idea is never given to you without you being given the power to make it reality. You must, nevertheless, suffer for it.

Bach, Richard

26.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

27.

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

Hubbard, Elbert

28.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

29.

Good ideas are a dime a dozen, bad ones are free.

Horton, Doug

30.

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

Canetti, Elias

31.

A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.

James, William

32.

The simple joy of taking an idea into one's own hands and giving it proper form, that's exciting.

Nelson, George

33.

There is no adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact of a new idea.

Bridgman, P. W.

34.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

35.

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

36.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

37.

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

Trotsky, Leon

38.

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

Jim Hightower

39.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

40.

If you pray for only one thing, .let it be for an idea.

Sutton, Percy

41.

The most important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.

Bragg, Sir William

42.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

43.

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

44.

Man's fear of ideas is probably the greatest dike holding back human knowledge and happiness.

Ernst, Morris L.

45.

The ideas dictate everything, you have to be true to that or you're dead.

Lynch, David

46.

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

Chartier, Alain

47.

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

48.

I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

Georgia O'Keeffe

49.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

50.

The difference between people and ideas is... only superficial.

Rorty, Richard