Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.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

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

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

Mason, Ken

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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

Emile Chartier

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

Bachelard, Gaston

10.

It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

11.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

12.

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

Hodges, Job E.

13.

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

Canetti, Elias

14.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

15.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

16.

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

Einstein, Albert

17.

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

Townsend, Robert

18.

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

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.

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

21.

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

Anatole France

22.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

23.

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

24.

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

Bunche, Ralph

25.

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

Butler, Samuel

26.

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

P. B. Medawar

27.

Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience.

Hyman Rickover

28.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

29.

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

30.

It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

Keynes, John Maynard

31.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

32.

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

Williamson, Marianne

33.

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

Walter Bagehot

34.

You have to hatch ideas -- and then hitch them.

Everson, Ray D.

35.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

36.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

H. L. Mencken

37.

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

38.

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

39.

Get your ideas on paper and study them. Do not let them go to waste!

Brown, Les

40.

A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it.

Proust, Marcel

41.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

42.

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

43.

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

44.

The ideas of a time are like the clothes of a season: they are as arbitrary, as much imposed by some superior will which is seldom explicit. They are utilitarian and political, the instruments of smooth-running government.

Lewis, Wyndham

45.

Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things.

Dogen

46.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

47.

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

Frost, Robert

48.

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

John Cage

49.

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