Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Hugo, Victor

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

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

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

Twain, Mark

Ideas won't work unless you do.

You look at any giant corporation, and I mean the biggies, and they all started with a guy with an idea, doing it well.

Robbins, Irvine

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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

Hyman Rickover

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

Berry, John

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

Hill, Napoleon

10.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

11.

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

12.

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

Hugo, Victor

13.

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

Saunders, Richard

14.

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

John Cage

15.

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

Victor Hugo

16.

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

Mason, Ken

17.

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

Bunche, Ralph

18.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

19.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

20.

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

21.

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

22.

A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

23.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

24.

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

Keynes, John Maynard

25.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

26.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

27.

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

28.

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

Frost, Robert

29.

If you pray for only one thing, .let it be for an idea.

Sutton, Percy

30.

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

31.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

32.

Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.

Trotsky, Leon

33.

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

P. B. Medawar

34.

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

35.

Good ideas are a dime a dozen, bad ones are free.

Horton, Doug

36.

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

Niblack, Griff

37.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

42.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

43.

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

44.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

45.

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

Anatole France

46.

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

Mann, Thomas

47.

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

Howard Aiken

48.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

49.

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.

50.

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

Rorty, Richard