Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Anatole France

Best Quotes about Ideas

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

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

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

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

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

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

Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.

Bachelard, Gaston

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

Nelson, George

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

Marquis, Don

10.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

11.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

12.

There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than politicians think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas... that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.

Foucault, Michel

13.

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.

14.

No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.

Sir Frederick G. Banting

15.

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

Maritain, Jacques

16.

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.

17.

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

Rostand, Jean

18.

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

19.

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

Simpson, E. L.

20.

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

Everson, Ray D.

21.

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

Hugo, Victor

22.

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

23.

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

Sutton, Percy

24.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

25.

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

Anatole France

26.

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

27.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

28.

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

29.

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

Penny, A. Owen

30.

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

31.

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.

32.

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.

33.

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

34.

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

Brande, Dorothea

35.

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

John Cage

36.

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

37.

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

Williamson, Marianne

38.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

39.

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

Emile Chartier

40.

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

Cotvos

41.

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.

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Hortense Calisher

45.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

46.

In every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.

Bacon, Francis

47.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

48.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

49.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

50.

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

Bunche, Ralph