Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

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

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

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

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

Cotvos

The world moves, and ideas that were good once are not always good.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

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.

10.

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

Hodges, Job E.

11.

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

Berry, John

12.

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.

13.

Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.

Whitehead, Alfred North

14.

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

15.

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

Pound, Ezra

16.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

17.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

18.

Ideas lose themselves as quickly as quail, and one must wing them the minute they rise out of the grass, or they are gone.

Kennedy, Thomas F.

19.

Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy.

Jim Hightower

20.

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

James, William

21.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

22.

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

23.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

24.

Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea.

Rohn, Jim

25.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

26.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

27.

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.

28.

Ideas are a capital that bears interest only in the hands of talent.

Rivarol, Antoine

29.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

30.

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

Rorty, Richard

31.

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

32.

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

Block, Henry

33.

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

John Cage

34.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

35.

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

Avery, Milton

36.

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

37.

This is my answer to the gap between ideas and action - I will write it out.

Hortense Calisher

38.

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

Anatole France

39.

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

40.

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

Koysis, Ted

41.

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

Townsend, Robert

42.

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

Hill, Napoleon

43.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

44.

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

Penny, A. Owen

45.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

46.

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

47.

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

Brande, Dorothea

48.

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

Horton, Doug

49.

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

50.

The most important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.