Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Koysis, Ted

Best Quotes about Ideas

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

A good idea plus capable men cannot fail; it is better than money in the bank.

Berry, John

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

Bridgman, P. W.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

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

Brown, Les

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

Rivarol, Antoine

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

Sutton, Percy

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

10.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

11.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

12.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

13.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

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

15.

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

Chartier, Alain

16.

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

Hector Berlioz

17.

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

18.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

19.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

20.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

21.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

22.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

23.

A crank is someone with a new idea -- until it catches on.

Twain, Mark

24.

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

Avery, Milton

25.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

26.

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

27.

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

John Steinbeck

28.

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

Picasso, Pablo

29.

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

30.

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.

31.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

35.

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

Victor Hugo

36.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

37.

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

Saunders, Richard

38.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

39.

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

40.

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

41.

You have to hatch ideas -- and then hitch them.

Everson, Ray D.

42.

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

Harris, Sidney J.

43.

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

Proust, Marcel

44.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

45.

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.

46.

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

47.

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

Frost, Robert

48.

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

Maritain, Jacques

49.

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

Howard Aiken

50.

Everything begins with an idea.