Motivational Quotes

Ideas

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

- Brown, Ron

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

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

Hyman Rickover

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

Mann, Thomas

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

Nelson, George

All opening moves were the same, like in chess. You don't have to come up with anything new, there's no point, because you're both after the same thing anyway. The game soon finds its own way and it's only at that point that you need a strategy.

Paolo Giordano

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

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

Butler, Samuel

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

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

Block, Henry

10.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

11.

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

Brande, Dorothea

12.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

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.

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

15.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

16.

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

Eliot, George

17.

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

Koysis, Ted

18.

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

Emile Chartier

19.

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

Lynch, David

20.

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

Walter Bagehot

21.

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

Anatole France

22.

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

Niblack, Griff

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Trotsky, Leon

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Frost, Robert

29.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

30.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

31.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

32.

The difference between people and ideas is... only superficial.

Rorty, Richard

33.

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.

34.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

35.

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

Maritain, Jacques

36.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

37.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don't like their rules, whose would you use?

Carnegie, Dale

38.

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

Marquis, Don

39.

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

40.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

41.

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

42.

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

43.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

44.

Whenever I hear people talking about liberal ideas, I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive. The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

45.

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

46.

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

Einstein, Albert

47.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

48.

It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

49.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

50.

Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the ocean desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny.

Carl Schurz