Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Hugo, Victor

Best Quotes about Ideas

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.

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

Hill, Napoleon

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

Mason, Ken

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

Eliot, George

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

Niblack, Griff

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

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

Keynes, John Maynard

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

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

10.

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

Rorty, Richard

11.

Good ideas and innovations must be driven into existence by courageous patience.

Rickover, Hyman G.

12.

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

Brande, Dorothea

13.

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

Saunders, Richard

14.

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.

15.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

16.

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

Sutton, Percy

17.

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

18.

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

Chartier, Alain

19.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

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.

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

John Cage

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Proust, Marcel

25.

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

26.

Man's fear of ideas is probably the greatest dike holding back human knowledge and happiness.

Ernst, Morris L.

27.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

28.

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

29.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

30.

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

31.

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

John Steinbeck

32.

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

33.

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

Koysis, Ted

34.

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

Hugo, Victor

35.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

36.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

37.

No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.

Sir Frederick G. Banting

38.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

39.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

40.

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

Judith Brocklehurst

41.

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

42.

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

Keynes, John Maynard

43.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

44.

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

Block, Henry

45.

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

Penny, A. Owen

46.

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

Howard Aiken

47.

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

48.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

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

50.

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

Bunche, Ralph