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

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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

Mason, Ken

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

Walter Bagehot

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

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

Pauling, Linus

Think for thyself one good idea, but known to be thine own, is better than a thousand gleaned from fields by others sown.

Wilson, Alexander

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

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

Bachelard, Gaston

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

Penny, A. Owen

10.

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

Rorty, Richard

11.

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.

Hector Berlioz

12.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

13.

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

14.

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

Judith Brocklehurst

15.

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

Hugo, Victor

16.

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

17.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

18.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

19.

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you only have one.

Chartier, Alain

20.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

21.

Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

Howard Aiken

22.

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

James, William

23.

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.

24.

A crank is someone with a new idea -- until it catches on.

Twain, Mark

25.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

29.

It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.

Oech, Roger Von

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

33.

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

Saunders, Richard

34.

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

Keynes, John Maynard

35.

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

Victor Hugo

36.

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

Eliot, George

37.

Such as take lodgings in a head that's to be let unfurnished.

Butler, Samuel

38.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

39.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

40.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

41.

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

Anatole France

42.

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

Koysis, Ted

43.

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

Keynes, John Maynard

44.

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

45.

A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

46.

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

Canetti, Elias

47.

The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.

P. B. Medawar

48.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

49.

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

50.

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

Hortense Calisher