Motivational Quotes

Ideas

Man's fear of ideas is probably the greatest dike holding back human knowledge and happiness.

- Ernst, Morris L.

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

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

James, William

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

Avery, Milton

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

Nelson, George

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

Hugo, Victor

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

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

10.

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

William O. Douglas

11.

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

12.

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

Eliot, George

13.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

14.

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

Walter Bagehot

15.

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

Picasso, Pablo

16.

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

17.

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.

18.

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

Maritain, Jacques

19.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

20.

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

Twain, Mark

21.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

22.

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

Niblack, Griff

23.

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

P. B. Medawar

24.

If you pray for only one thing, .let it be for an idea.

Sutton, Percy

25.

It first appeared like a crazy idea. It turned out he had a great idea.

Munro, J. Richard

26.

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

Marquis, Don

27.

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

Trotsky, Leon

28.

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

Penny, A. Owen

29.

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

30.

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

Howard Aiken

31.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

32.

If you have the same ideas as everybody else but have them one week earlier than everyone else then you will be hailed as a visionary. But if you have them five years earlier you will be named a lunatic.

Jones, Barry

33.

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

34.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

35.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

36.

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.

37.

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

Cotvos

38.

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

Einstein, Albert

39.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

40.

If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.

Mann, Thomas

41.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

42.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

43.

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

Berry, John

44.

Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the ocean desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny.

Carl Schurz

45.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

46.

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

47.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

48.

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

49.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

50.

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