Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Kettering, Charles F.

Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

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

Block, Henry

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

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

Samuel Goldwyn

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

Mann, Thomas

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

James, William

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

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

Nelson, George

10.

An idea is never given to you without you being given the power to make it reality. You must, nevertheless, suffer for it.

Bach, Richard

11.

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.

12.

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

Picasso, Pablo

13.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

14.

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

15.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

16.

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

P. B. Medawar

17.

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

Judith Brocklehurst

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Canetti, Elias

21.

Foucault, Michel

22.

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

Howard Aiken

23.

You look at any giant corporation, and I mean the biggies, and they all started with a guy with an idea, doing it well.

Robbins, Irvine

24.

The most important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.

Bragg, Sir William

25.

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

Maritain, Jacques

26.

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

Townsend, Robert

27.

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

28.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

29.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

30.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

31.

So long as new ideas are created, sales will continue to reach new highs.

Brande, Dorothea

32.

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

Pauling, Linus

33.

He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.

Disraeli, Benjamin

34.

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

35.

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

Twain, Mark

36.

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

Rorty, Richard

37.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

38.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

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.

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

Chartier, Alain

41.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

42.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

43.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

44.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

45.

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

46.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

47.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

48.

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

49.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

50.

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