Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

There are well-dressed foolish ideas, just as there are will-dressed fools.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

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

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

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

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

Proust, Marcel

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

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

10.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

11.

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

Butler, Samuel

12.

The simple joy of taking an idea into one's own hands and giving it proper form, that's exciting.

Nelson, George

13.

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

14.

Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.

Harris, Sidney J.

15.

To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.

Rostand, Jean

16.

The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

Pauling, Linus

17.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

18.

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

Keynes, John Maynard

19.

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

Mason, Ken

20.

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.

21.

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

Hodges, Job E.

22.

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

John Cage

23.

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

Bunche, Ralph

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

27.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

28.

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

Frost, Robert

29.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

30.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

31.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

32.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

33.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

34.

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

Emile Chartier

35.

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

Brande, Dorothea

36.

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.

37.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

38.

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

Maritain, Jacques

39.

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

Jim Hightower

40.

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

41.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

42.

An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.

Picasso, Pablo

43.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

44.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

45.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

46.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

50.

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