Motivational Quotes

Ideas

It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.

- Gide, Andre

Best Quotes about Ideas

Ideas won't work unless you do.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

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

To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.

Rostand, Jean

Gide, Andre

10.

An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.

Frost, Robert

11.

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

12.

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

Rorty, Richard

13.

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

Hugo, Victor

14.

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

15.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

16.

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

Picasso, Pablo

17.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

18.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

19.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

20.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

21.

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

Penny, A. Owen

22.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

23.

Ideas not coupled with action never become bigger than the brain cells they occupied.

Glasgow, Arnold H.

24.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

25.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

26.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Walter Bagehot

31.

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

32.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

33.

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

Twain, Mark

34.

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

35.

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

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.

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

Hill, Napoleon

38.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

39.

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

Bunche, Ralph

40.

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

41.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

42.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

43.

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

Saunders, Richard

44.

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

45.

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

Williamson, Marianne

46.

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

William O. Douglas

47.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

48.

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

Mann, Thomas

49.

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

P. B. Medawar

50.

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