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

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

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

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

Pauling, Linus

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

Munro, J. Richard

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

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

Anatole France

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

Edison, Thomas A.

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

Eliot, George

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

10.

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

Koysis, Ted

11.

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

12.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

13.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

14.

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

15.

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

Hugo, Victor

16.

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

Proust, Marcel

17.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

18.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

19.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

20.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

21.

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

William O. Douglas

22.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

23.

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

24.

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

Hodges, Job E.

25.

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

26.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

27.

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

Penny, A. Owen

28.

The idea is in my head to put it down is nothing.

Avery, Milton

29.

In every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.

Bacon, Francis

30.

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

Saunders, Richard

31.

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.

32.

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

Hill, Napoleon

33.

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

Block, Henry

34.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

35.

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

Sutton, Percy

36.

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

37.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

38.

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

39.

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

Brown, Les

40.

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