Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

The idea is in my head to put it down is nothing.

Avery, Milton

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

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

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.

Hector Berlioz

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

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

Anatole France

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

Rorty, Richard

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

Edison, Thomas A.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

10.

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

Picasso, Pablo

11.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

12.

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

Brown, Les

13.

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

Bunche, Ralph

14.

It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.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

15.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

16.

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

17.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

18.

I'm not impressed with the power of a corporate president. I am impressed with the power of ideas.

Mason, Ken

19.

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

Canetti, Elias

20.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

21.

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

Marquis, Don

22.

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

23.

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

Simpson, E. L.

24.

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

25.

A handsome parson is fit for nothing but ti put ideas into the young woman's heads.

Judith Brocklehurst

26.

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

Berry, John

27.

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.

28.

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

Hugo, Victor

29.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

30.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

31.

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

Williamson, Marianne

32.

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

Proust, Marcel

33.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

John Steinbeck

34.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

35.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

36.

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

Block, Henry

37.

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

P. B. Medawar

38.

There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man. --

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

39.

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

40.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

41.

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

42.

Good ideas and innovations must be driven into existence by courageous patience.

Rickover, Hyman G.

43.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

44.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

45.

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

46.

People find ideas a bore because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf.

Pound, Ezra

47.

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

Emile Chartier

48.

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

Harris, Sidney J.

49.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

50.

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