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

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

Samuel Goldwyn

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

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

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

Simpson, E. L.

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

Bunche, Ralph

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

Hugo, Victor

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

10.

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

11.

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

Nelson, George

12.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

13.

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

14.

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

Avery, Milton

15.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

16.

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

Penny, A. Owen

17.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

18.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

19.

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

20.

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

21.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

22.

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

Einstein, Albert

23.

It's very good for an idea to be commonplace. The important thing is that a new idea should develop out of what is already there so that it soon becomes an old acquaintance. Old acquaintances aren't by any means always welcome, but at least one can't be mistaken as to who or what they are.

Fitzgerald, Penelope

24.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

25.

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

Mason, Ken

26.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

27.

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

28.

In every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.

Bacon, Francis

29.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

30.

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

31.

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

Twain, Mark

32.

There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who hate them.

Emile Chartier

33.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

34.

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

35.

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

Canetti, Elias

36.

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

Horton, Doug

37.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

38.

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

39.

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

Koysis, Ted

40.

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

41.

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

P. B. Medawar

42.

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

John Cage

43.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

44.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

45.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

46.

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

James, William

47.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

48.

When an idea reaches critical mass there is no stopping the shift its presence will induce.

Williamson, Marianne

49.

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

Pound, Ezra

50.

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