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

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

John Cage

It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Rostand, Jean

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

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

Frost, Robert

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

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

Simpson, E. L.

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

Hyman Rickover

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.

Maritain, Jacques

14.

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

Jim Hightower

15.

Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things.

Dogen

16.

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.

17.

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

18.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

19.

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

20.

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

Niblack, Griff

21.

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

Hortense Calisher

22.

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

Picasso, Pablo

23.

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

24.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

25.

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

26.

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

Einstein, Albert

27.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

28.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

29.

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

Keynes, John Maynard

30.

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

Hubbard, Elbert

31.

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

William O. Douglas

32.

I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it.

Samuel Goldwyn

33.

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

34.

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

Penny, A. Owen

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.

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

37.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

38.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

39.

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

40.

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

Canetti, Elias

41.

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

Townsend, Robert

42.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

43.

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

Block, Henry

44.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

45.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

46.

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

47.

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

Saunders, Richard

48.

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

49.

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

Judith Brocklehurst

50.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.