Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Block, Henry

Best Quotes about Ideas

Lots of people know a good thing the minute the other fellow sees it first.

Hodges, Job E.

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

If you have the same ideas as everybody else but have them one week earlier than everyone else then you will be hailed as a visionary. But if you have them five years earlier you will be named a lunatic.

Jones, Barry

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

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

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

Hortense Calisher

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

Great people talk about ideas. Small people talk about other people.

Gibson, Tobias S.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

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 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

12.

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

Niblack, Griff

13.

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

Horton, Doug

14.

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

Brande, Dorothea

15.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

16.

The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.

William O. Douglas

17.

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

Cotvos

18.

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

Munro, J. Richard

19.

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.

20.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

21.

It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

Keynes, John Maynard

22.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

23.

Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things.

Dogen

24.

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

Hugo, Victor

25.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

26.

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

27.

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

P. B. Medawar

28.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

29.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

30.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

31.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

32.

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

Victor Hugo

33.

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

Hyman Rickover

34.

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

35.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

36.

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

37.

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you only have one.

Chartier, Alain

38.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

39.

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

40.

Such as take lodgings in a head that's to be let unfurnished.

Butler, Samuel

41.

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

42.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

43.

A great idea is usually original to more than one discoverer. Great ideas come when the world needs them. Great ideas surround the world's ignorance and press for admission.

Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart

44.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

45.

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

Anatole France

46.

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

Nelson, George

47.

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

48.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

49.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

50.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

Walter Bagehot