Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.

Mann, Thomas

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

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

Edison, Thomas A.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

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

Hill, Napoleon

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

Anatole France

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

Howard Aiken

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.

Whitehead, Alfred North

10.

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

11.

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

Canetti, Elias

12.

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

William O. Douglas

13.

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

14.

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

Marquis, Don

15.

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

16.

Man's fear of ideas is probably the greatest dike holding back human knowledge and happiness.

Ernst, Morris L.

17.

An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.

Frost, Robert

18.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

19.

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

Pound, Ezra

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

23.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

24.

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

Nelson, George

25.

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

Judith Brocklehurst

26.

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

27.

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

Hortense Calisher

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.

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

Avery, Milton

30.

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

Williamson, Marianne

31.

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

John Cage

32.

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

Hugo, Victor

33.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

34.

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

Koysis, Ted

35.

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.

36.

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

Sutton, Percy

37.

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

38.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

39.

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

Maritain, Jacques

40.

They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities.

Einstein, Albert

41.

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

P. B. Medawar

42.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

43.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

44.

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

45.

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

Bunche, Ralph

46.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

47.

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

Saunders, Richard

48.

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