Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Pound, Ezra

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.

The idea is in my head to put it down is nothing.

Avery, Milton

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

Penny, A. Owen

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

Brande, Dorothea

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

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

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

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

10.

Man's mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

11.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

12.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

13.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

14.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

15.

Go out and buy yourself a five-cent pencil and a ten-cent notebook and begin to write down some million-dollar ideas for yourself.

Grinde, Bob

16.

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

Walter Bagehot

17.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

18.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

19.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

20.

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.

Hugo, Victor

21.

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

22.

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

Marquis, Don

23.

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

Maritain, Jacques

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

John Cage

27.

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

Picasso, Pablo

28.

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

Rohn, Jim

29.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

30.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

31.

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

32.

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

Hyman Rickover

33.

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.

34.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

35.

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

William O. Douglas

36.

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

Eliot, George

37.

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

Block, Henry

38.

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

Berry, John

39.

A new idea is like a child. It's easier to conceive than to deliver.

Koysis, Ted

40.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

41.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

42.

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

Cotvos

43.

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

Proust, Marcel

44.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

45.

I'm not impressed with the power of a corporate president. I am impressed with the power of ideas.

Mason, Ken

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

49.

The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

Pauling, Linus

50.

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