Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Edison, Thomas A.

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

Sutton, Percy

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

Hugo, Victor

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

Kettering, Charles F.

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

James, William

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

Saunders, Richard

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

10.

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

John Cage

11.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

16.

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

17.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

18.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

19.

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

Nelson, George

20.

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.

21.

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

22.

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

23.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

24.

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

25.

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.

26.

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

Cotvos

27.

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

Walter Bagehot

28.

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

29.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

30.

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

31.

A handsome parson is fit for nothing but ti put ideas into the young woman's heads.

Judith Brocklehurst

32.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

33.

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

34.

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

Berry, John

35.

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

Canetti, Elias

36.

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

Hyman Rickover

37.

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

Penny, A. Owen

38.

So long as new ideas are created, sales will continue to reach new highs.

Brande, Dorothea

39.

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

Brown, Les

40.

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

Frost, Robert

41.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

42.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

43.

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

Hill, Napoleon

44.

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

Proust, Marcel

45.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

46.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

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.

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

49.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

50.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.