Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Canetti, Elias

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Chartier, Alain

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.

Hector Berlioz

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

Proust, Marcel

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

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

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

Eliot, George

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

Maritain, Jacques

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

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

10.

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

Anatole France

11.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

12.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

13.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

14.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

15.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

16.

It's very good for an idea to be commonplace. The important thing is that a new idea should develop out of what is already there so that it soon becomes an old acquaintance. Old acquaintances aren't by any means always welcome, but at least one can't be mistaken as to who or what they are.

Fitzgerald, Penelope

17.

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

Townsend, Robert

18.

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

Mann, Thomas

19.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

20.

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

Rostand, Jean

21.

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

Simpson, E. L.

22.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

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.

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

Marquis, Don

25.

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

26.

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

Penny, A. Owen

27.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

28.

Ideas not coupled with action never become bigger than the brain cells they occupied.

Glasgow, Arnold H.

29.

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

Saunders, Richard

30.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

31.

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

P. B. Medawar

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

36.

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.

37.

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

38.

A good idea plus capable men cannot fail; it is better than money in the bank.

Berry, John

39.

Get your ideas on paper and study them. Do not let them go to waste!

Brown, Les

40.

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

Butler, Samuel

41.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

42.

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

Block, Henry

43.

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

Howard Aiken

44.

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

Everson, Ray D.

45.

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

Bunche, Ralph

46.

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

47.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

48.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

49.

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

50.

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

Hugo, Victor