Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Bridgman, P. W.

Best Quotes about Ideas

Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: (1) It's completely impossible. (2) It's possible, but it's not worth doing. (3) I said it was a good idea all along.

Clarke, Arthur C.

A crank is someone with a new idea -- until it catches on.

Twain, Mark

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

Block, Henry

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

Chartier, Alain

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

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

Townsend, Robert

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

Canetti, Elias

10.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

11.

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

12.

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

Avery, Milton

13.

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

Hugo, Victor

14.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

15.

Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy.

Jim Hightower

16.

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

17.

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

Frost, Robert

18.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

19.

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

Emile Chartier

20.

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

John Cage

21.

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

Judith Brocklehurst

22.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

23.

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

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.

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

Anatole France

26.

You look at any giant corporation, and I mean the biggies, and they all started with a guy with an idea, doing it well.

Robbins, Irvine

27.

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

28.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

29.

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

Einstein, Albert

30.

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

Picasso, Pablo

31.

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

Hugo, Victor

32.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

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.

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

Pound, Ezra

35.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

36.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

37.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

38.

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

Penny, A. Owen

39.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

40.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

41.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

42.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

43.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

44.

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

Harris, Sidney J.

45.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

46.

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

47.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

48.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

49.

The ideas dictate everything, you have to be true to that or you're dead.

Lynch, David

50.

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.