Motivational Quotes

Ideas

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

- Caird, Mona

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Picasso, Pablo

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.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

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

John Cage

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

Avery, Milton

I'm not impressed with the power of a corporate president. I am impressed with the power of ideas.

Mason, Ken

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

10.

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

11.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Rostand, Jean

15.

Take the obvious, add a cupful of brains, a generous pinch of imagination, a bucketful of courage and daring, stir well and bring to a boil.

Baruch, Bernard M.

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Mann, Thomas

19.

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

Keynes, John Maynard

20.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

21.

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

Saunders, Richard

22.

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

Anatole France

23.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

24.

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

25.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

26.

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

Hill, Napoleon

27.

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.

28.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Emile Chartier

32.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

33.

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

Marquis, Don

34.

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

35.

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

Brande, Dorothea

36.

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

Canetti, Elias

37.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

38.

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

Cotvos

39.

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

James, William

40.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

41.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

42.

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

43.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

44.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

45.

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

Twain, Mark

46.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

50.

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

Eliot, George