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

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

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

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

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

Horton, Doug

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

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

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

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

10.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

11.

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

Hector Berlioz

12.

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

13.

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

Victor Hugo

14.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

15.

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

16.

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

Butler, Samuel

17.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

18.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

19.

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

20.

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

Rohn, Jim

21.

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

Simpson, E. L.

22.

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

23.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

24.

If you want to get across an idea, wrap it up in a person.

Bunche, Ralph

25.

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

26.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

27.

If you want to kill any idea in the world today, get a committee working on it.

Kettering, Charles F.

28.

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

Nelson, George

29.

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

30.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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.

34.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

35.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

36.

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

Everson, Ray D.

37.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

38.

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

Penny, A. Owen

39.

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

Jim Hightower

40.

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

Keynes, John Maynard

41.

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

Cotvos

42.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

43.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

44.

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

Harris, Sidney J.

45.

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

Townsend, Robert

46.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

47.

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

48.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

49.

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

Brown, Les

50.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.