Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

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

Niblack, Griff

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

Brande, Dorothea

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

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

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

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

Block, Henry

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

10.

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

Harris, Sidney J.

11.

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

12.

Such as take lodgings in a head that's to be let unfurnished.

Butler, Samuel

13.

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

Koysis, Ted

14.

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

15.

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

John Cage

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.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Munro, J. Richard

20.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

21.

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

Hugo, Victor

22.

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

Marquis, Don

23.

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

Howard Aiken

24.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

25.

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

Berry, John

26.

Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.

Bachelard, Gaston

27.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

28.

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

Mann, Thomas

29.

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

30.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

31.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

32.

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

Simpson, E. L.

33.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

34.

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

35.

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

Twain, Mark

36.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

37.

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

Williamson, Marianne

38.

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

Cotvos

39.

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

40.

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

Chartier, Alain

41.

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

42.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

43.

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

44.

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

P. B. Medawar

45.

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

46.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

47.

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

48.

Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy.

Jim Hightower

49.

It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.

Anatole France

50.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim