Motivational Quotes

Ideas

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

- Brown, Ron

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Block, Henry

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

You have to hatch ideas -- and then hitch them.

Everson, Ray D.

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

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

Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.

Trotsky, Leon

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

Picasso, Pablo

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

10.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

11.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

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

13.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

14.

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

15.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

16.

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

Lynch, David

17.

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

Pound, Ezra

18.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

19.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

20.

A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.

James, William

21.

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

Canetti, Elias

22.

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

Williamson, Marianne

23.

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

Keynes, John Maynard

24.

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

Horton, Doug

25.

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

Hodges, Job E.

26.

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

Eliot, George

27.

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

Simpson, E. L.

28.

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

Maritain, Jacques

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

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.

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

Twain, Mark

34.

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

35.

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

William O. Douglas

36.

Our greatest lack is not money for any undertaking, but rather ideas, If the ideas are good, cash will somehow flow to where it is needed.

Schuller, Robert H.

37.

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

Howard Aiken

38.

To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.

Rostand, Jean

39.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

40.

The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

41.

Think for thyself one good idea, but known to be thine own, is better than a thousand gleaned from fields by others sown.

Wilson, Alexander

42.

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

Emile Chartier

43.

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

Judith Brocklehurst

44.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

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.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Proust, Marcel

49.

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

Saunders, Richard

50.

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

Townsend, Robert