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 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

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

Hill, Napoleon

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

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

Anatole France

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

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

Walter Bagehot

10.

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

11.

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

Mann, Thomas

12.

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

13.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

14.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

15.

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

16.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

17.

To have a great idea, have a lot of them.

Edison, Thomas A.

18.

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

19.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

20.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

21.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

22.

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.

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Williamson, Marianne

26.

Brain cells create ideas. Stress kills brain cells. Stress is not a good idea.

Saunders, Richard

27.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

28.

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

Nelson, George

29.

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

Eliot, George

30.

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

31.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

32.

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

Emile Chartier

33.

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

34.

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

Everson, Ray D.

35.

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.

36.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

37.

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

Berry, John

38.

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

John Cage

39.

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

Keynes, John Maynard

40.

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

Rorty, Richard

41.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

42.

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

Brown, Les

43.

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

Pound, Ezra

44.

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

45.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

46.

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

Penny, A. Owen

47.

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

Hyman Rickover

48.

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