Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

Georgia O'Keeffe

10.

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

Canetti, Elias

11.

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

Frost, Robert

12.

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

Butler, Samuel

13.

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

Avery, Milton

14.

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

15.

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

Hugo, Victor

16.

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

Hyman Rickover

17.

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

Einstein, Albert

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Koysis, Ted

22.

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

Horton, Doug

23.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

24.

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

Bragg, Sir William

25.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

26.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Rorty, Richard

30.

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

Hodges, Job E.

31.

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

32.

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

Walter Bagehot

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

36.

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

Berry, John

37.

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

38.

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

Brown, Les

39.

But how shall I get ideas? Keep your wits open! Observe! Observe! Study! Study! But above all, Think! Think! And when a noble image is indelibly impressed upon the mind -- Act!

Marden, Orison Swett

40.

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.

Hugo, Victor

41.

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

Jim Hightower

42.

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

Nelson, George

43.

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

Anatole France

44.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

45.

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

James, William

46.

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

Townsend, Robert

47.

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

48.

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

Niblack, Griff

49.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

50.

Ideas won't work unless you do.