Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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.

Best Quotes about Ideas

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.

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

Jim Hightower

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

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

Hortense Calisher

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

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

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

Berry, John

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

Mann, Thomas

10.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

11.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

12.

The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervor, live for it, and if need be, die for it.

Whitehead, Alfred North

13.

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

Picasso, Pablo

14.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

15.

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

James, William

16.

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.

17.

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

18.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

19.

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

Townsend, Robert

20.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

21.

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

22.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

23.

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

24.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

25.

The ideas dictate everything, you have to be true to that or you're dead.

Lynch, David

26.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

27.

Clarke, Arthur C.

28.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

29.

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

Rohn, Jim

30.

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

Proust, Marcel

31.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

32.

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

Hector Berlioz

33.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

34.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

35.

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

Everson, Ray D.

36.

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

Frost, Robert

37.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

38.

It's a pretty good idea to be of good cheer but not all the time. Just at the most unexpected times.

39.

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

Rostand, Jean

40.

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.

41.

It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.

Oech, Roger Von

42.

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

Anatole France

43.

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

44.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

45.

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

46.

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

William O. Douglas

47.

If you pray for only one thing, .let it be for an idea.

Sutton, Percy

48.

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

Pound, Ezra

49.

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