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

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

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

Cotvos

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

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

Emile Chartier

If a man had as many ideas during the day as he does when he has insomnia, he would make a fortune.

Niblack, Griff

The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervor, live for it, and if need be, die for it.

Whitehead, Alfred North

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

10.

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

Horton, Doug

11.

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

Canetti, Elias

12.

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

13.

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

James, William

14.

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

Hugo, Victor

15.

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

Victor Hugo

16.

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

Munro, J. Richard

17.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

18.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

19.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

20.

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

Hugo, Victor

21.

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

Sutton, Percy

22.

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

Pauling, Linus

23.

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

24.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

H. L. Mencken

25.

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

Hill, Napoleon

26.

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

27.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

28.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

29.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

30.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

31.

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

32.

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

Picasso, Pablo

33.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

34.

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

John Cage

35.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

36.

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

Hyman Rickover

37.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

38.

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

Berry, John

39.

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

40.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

41.

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

Simpson, E. L.

42.

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

43.

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

Brown, Les

44.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

45.

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

Penny, A. Owen

46.

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

47.

We like to test things... no matter how good an idea sounds, test it first.

Block, Henry

48.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

49.

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.

50.

Ideas are, in truth, force.