Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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

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

Hill, Napoleon

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

Walter Bagehot

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

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

Hugo, Victor

10.

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

11.

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

James, William

12.

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

Twain, Mark

13.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

It first appeared like a crazy idea. It turned out he had a great idea.

Munro, J. Richard

15.

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

Nelson, George

16.

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

Frost, Robert

17.

Go out and buy yourself a five-cent pencil and a ten-cent notebook and begin to write down some million-dollar ideas for yourself.

Grinde, Bob

18.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

19.

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

Picasso, Pablo

20.

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.

21.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

22.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

23.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Marquis, Don

27.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

28.

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

Pound, Ezra

29.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

30.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

31.

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

Chartier, Alain

32.

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

Emile Chartier

33.

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

34.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

35.

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

Simpson, E. L.

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.

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

Hector Berlioz

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

William O. Douglas

41.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

42.

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

Horton, Doug

43.

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

Samuel Goldwyn