Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Chartier, Alain

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

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

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

Ideas won't work unless you do.

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

Niblack, Griff

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

James, William

Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.

Harris, Sidney J.

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

Twain, Mark

12.

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

13.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

14.

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

Marquis, Don

15.

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

Avery, Milton

16.

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

17.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

18.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

19.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

20.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

21.

No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.

Sir Frederick G. Banting

22.

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

Emile Chartier

23.

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

Einstein, Albert

24.

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

Horton, Doug

25.

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

Mann, Thomas

26.

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

27.

Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.

Trotsky, Leon

28.

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

29.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

30.

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

Canetti, Elias

31.

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

Keynes, John Maynard

32.

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

Picasso, Pablo

33.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

34.

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

35.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

36.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

37.

The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

Pauling, Linus

38.

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

Anatole France

39.

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

Block, Henry

40.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

41.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

42.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

43.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

44.

When an idea reaches critical mass there is no stopping the shift its presence will induce.

Williamson, Marianne

45.

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.

46.

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

47.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

48.

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

Nelson, George

49.

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

50.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

John Steinbeck