Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- John Steinbeck

Best Quotes about Ideas

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.

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

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

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

Brown, Les

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

William O. Douglas

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

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

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

Chartier, Alain

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

10.

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

11.

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

Frost, Robert

12.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

13.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

14.

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

John Cage

15.

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

Hugo, Victor

16.

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

Munro, J. Richard

17.

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

Cotvos

18.

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

Hyman Rickover

19.

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

Anatole France

20.

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

21.

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

Harris, Sidney J.

22.

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

23.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

24.

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

Hill, Napoleon

25.

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

Howard Aiken

26.

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

27.

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

Marquis, Don

28.

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

Proust, Marcel

29.

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.

Hector Berlioz

30.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

31.

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

Niblack, Griff

32.

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.

33.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

34.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

Walter Bagehot

35.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

36.

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

37.

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

Rorty, Richard

38.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

39.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

40.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

41.

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

42.

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

Pauling, Linus

43.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

44.

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

Picasso, Pablo

45.

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

46.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

47.

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

Trotsky, Leon

48.

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

Koysis, Ted

49.

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