Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Hector Berlioz

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

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

P. B. Medawar

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

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

Rivarol, Antoine

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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

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

Alfred North Whitehead

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

Frost, Robert

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

10.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

11.

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

12.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

13.

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

James, William

14.

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

Cotvos

15.

Take the obvious, add a cupful of brains, a generous pinch of imagination, a bucketful of courage and daring, stir well and bring to a boil.

Baruch, Bernard M.

16.

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

17.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

18.

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

19.

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

20.

I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

Georgia O'Keeffe

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Jim Hightower

25.

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

Saunders, Richard

26.

Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: (1) It's completely impossible. (2) It's possible, but it's not worth doing. (3) I said it was a good idea all along.

Clarke, Arthur C.

27.

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

28.

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

Williamson, Marianne

29.

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

Block, Henry

30.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

31.

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

Proust, Marcel

32.

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

Townsend, Robert

33.

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

34.

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

Berry, John

35.

Our greatest lack is not money for any undertaking, but rather ideas, If the ideas are good, cash will somehow flow to where it is needed.

Schuller, Robert H.

36.

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

Howard Aiken

37.

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.

38.

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

39.

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

Judith Brocklehurst

40.

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

41.

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

Maritain, Jacques

42.

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

Brown, Les

43.

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.

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.

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

46.

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

Victor Hugo

47.

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

48.

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

49.

All opening moves were the same, like in chess. You don't have to come up with anything new, there's no point, because you're both after the same thing anyway. The game soon finds its own way and it's only at that point that you need a strategy.

Paolo Giordano

50.

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

Samuel Goldwyn