Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

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

Trotsky, Leon

A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

Man's mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience.

Hyman Rickover

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

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

Bunche, Ralph

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

Victor Hugo

10.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

11.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

12.

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.

13.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

14.

The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.

P. B. Medawar

15.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

16.

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

Hugo, Victor

17.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

18.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

19.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

20.

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

Brown, Les

21.

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

Proust, Marcel

22.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

23.

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.

24.

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

25.

Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.

Hugo, Victor

26.

Whenever I hear people talking about liberal ideas, I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive. The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

27.

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

Everson, Ray D.

28.

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

29.

All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.

Hill, Napoleon

30.

The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

31.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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.

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

34.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

35.

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

36.

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

Emile Chartier

37.

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

Harris, Sidney J.

38.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

39.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

40.

If you want to kill any idea in the world today, get a committee working on it.

Kettering, Charles F.

41.

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

Canetti, Elias

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.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

44.

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

45.

It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.

Gide, Andre

46.

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

Koysis, Ted

47.

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

Twain, Mark

48.

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

Lynch, David

49.

A good idea plus capable men cannot fail; it is better than money in the bank.