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

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

Hortense Calisher

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.

Ideas lose themselves as quickly as quail, and one must wing them the minute they rise out of the grass, or they are gone.

Kennedy, Thomas F.

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

Koysis, Ted

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

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

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

Pound, Ezra

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.

Hill, Napoleon

10.

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

Block, Henry

11.

Lots of people know a good thing the minute the other fellow sees it first.

Hodges, Job E.

12.

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

Hugo, Victor

13.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

14.

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

15.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

16.

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

17.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

18.

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

John Cage

19.

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

John Steinbeck

20.

Ideas are invented only as correctives to the past. Through repeated rectification of this kind one may hope to disengage an idea that is valid.

Bachelard, Gaston

21.

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

22.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

23.

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

Judith Brocklehurst

24.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

25.

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

26.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

27.

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

Hector Berlioz

28.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

29.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

33.

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

34.

Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.

Harris, Sidney J.

35.

A man is not necessarily intelligent because he has plenty of ideas, any more than he is a good general because he has plenty of soldiers.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

36.

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

Chartier, Alain

37.

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

Lynch, David

38.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

39.

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

40.

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

Mason, Ken

41.

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

Emile Chartier

42.

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

43.

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wander whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

44.

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

45.

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

Howard Aiken

46.

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

47.

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

Rohn, Jim

48.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

49.

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

Trotsky, Leon

50.

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