Motivational Quotes

Ideas

There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man. --

- Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Best Quotes about Ideas

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

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

Maritain, Jacques

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

Pauling, Linus

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

Rohn, Jim

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

John Steinbeck

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

10.

The ideas dictate everything, you have to be true to that or you're dead.

Lynch, David

11.

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.

12.

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

13.

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

Saunders, Richard

14.

There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man. --

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

15.

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

Townsend, Robert

16.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

17.

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

18.

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

Bunche, Ralph

19.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

20.

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

Walter Bagehot

21.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

22.

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

23.

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

John Cage

24.

Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.

Trotsky, Leon

25.

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

Hyman Rickover

26.

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

27.

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

Mason, Ken

28.

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

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.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

31.

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

Einstein, Albert

32.

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

Pound, Ezra

33.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

34.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

35.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

36.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

37.

It's a pretty good idea to be of good cheer but not all the time. Just at the most unexpected times.

38.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

39.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

40.

The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.

Alfred North Whitehead

41.

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

Cotvos

42.

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.

43.

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

Horton, Doug

44.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

45.

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

Hugo, Victor

46.

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

William O. Douglas

47.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

48.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

49.

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

50.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim