Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Holmes, Oliver Wendell

Best Quotes about Ideas

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

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

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

P. B. Medawar

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

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

Block, Henry

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

Twain, Mark

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

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

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

Hill, Napoleon

10.

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wander whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

11.

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

12.

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

Penny, A. Owen

13.

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

14.

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

Emile Chartier

15.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

16.

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

17.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

John Steinbeck

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the ocean desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny.

Carl Schurz

22.

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

John Cage

23.

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

Proust, Marcel

24.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

25.

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

Cotvos

26.

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

Canetti, Elias

27.

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

Hodges, Job E.

28.

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

29.

It's a pretty good idea to be of good cheer but not all the time. Just at the most unexpected times.

30.

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

Brown, Les

31.

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

Jim Hightower

32.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

33.

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

Anatole France

34.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

35.

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

36.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

37.

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

Keynes, John Maynard

38.

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

Rorty, Richard

39.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

40.

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

Simpson, E. L.

41.

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

Bunche, Ralph

42.

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

Hugo, Victor

43.

People find ideas a bore because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf.

Pound, Ezra

44.

It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

45.

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

Mason, Ken

46.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

47.

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

48.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

49.

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

50.

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

Munro, J. Richard