Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

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

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Rivarol, Antoine

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

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

Victor Hugo

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

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

Alfred North Whitehead

10.

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

Simpson, E. L.

11.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

12.

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

Walter Bagehot

13.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

14.

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

15.

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

John Steinbeck

16.

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

Hugo, Victor

17.

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

Howard Aiken

18.

There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man. --

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

20.

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

Hodges, Job E.

21.

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

22.

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

Pound, Ezra

23.

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.

24.

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

Hubbard, Elbert

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

28.

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

Bunche, Ralph

29.

It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.

Canetti, Elias

30.

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

Nelson, George

31.

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

John Cage

32.

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

Berry, John

33.

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

34.

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

Eliot, George

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Block, Henry

38.

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

39.

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.

40.

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

41.

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

Brande, Dorothea

42.

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

43.

Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.

Whitehead, Alfred North

44.

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

45.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

46.

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

47.

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

William O. Douglas

48.

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

Frost, Robert

49.

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

Marquis, Don

50.

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