Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

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

Berry, John

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

Bridgman, P. W.

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

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

Hyman Rickover

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

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

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

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

Canetti, Elias

10.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

11.

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

Pauling, Linus

12.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

13.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

14.

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

Nelson, George

15.

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

16.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

17.

Many ideas are good for a limited time -- not forever.

Townsend, Robert

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Pound, Ezra

23.

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

Cotvos

24.

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

25.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

26.

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

Hill, Napoleon

27.

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

Hortense Calisher

28.

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

29.

Ideas not coupled with action never become bigger than the brain cells they occupied.

Glasgow, Arnold H.

30.

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

31.

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

Saunders, Richard

32.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

33.

Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

Howard Aiken

34.

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

Proust, Marcel

35.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

36.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

37.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

38.

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

John Steinbeck

39.

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

40.

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

41.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

42.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

43.

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

Marquis, Don

44.

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

Maritain, Jacques