Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- John Cage

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

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

Nelson, George

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

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

To have a great idea, have a lot of them.

Edison, Thomas A.

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.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

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

Chartier, Alain

10.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

11.

Great people talk about ideas. Small people talk about other people.

Gibson, Tobias S.

12.

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

Emile Chartier

13.

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

14.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

15.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

This is my answer to the gap between ideas and action - I will write it out.

Hortense Calisher

21.

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

Frost, Robert

22.

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

Cotvos

23.

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

24.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

25.

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

Eliot, George

26.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

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.

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

Hyman Rickover

29.

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

Trotsky, Leon

30.

The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.

William O. Douglas

31.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

32.

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

Mason, Ken

33.

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

Simpson, E. L.

34.

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

Rorty, Richard

35.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

36.

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

Hugo, Victor

37.

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.

38.

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

39.

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

Keynes, John Maynard

40.

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

Rostand, Jean

41.

Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea.

Rohn, Jim

42.

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

43.

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

Pound, Ezra

44.

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

45.

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

46.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

47.

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

48.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

50.

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