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

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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

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

Edison, Thomas A.

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

Marquis, Don

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.

James, William

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

10.

The ideas dictate everything, you have to be true to that or you're dead.

Lynch, David

11.

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

Harris, Sidney J.

12.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

13.

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

Frost, Robert

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Hodges, Job E.

17.

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

Niblack, Griff

18.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

19.

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

Victor Hugo

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Proust, Marcel

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Chartier, Alain

27.

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

Bunche, Ralph

28.

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

29.

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

Anatole France

30.

If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.

Mann, Thomas

31.

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

32.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

33.

If you have the same ideas as everybody else but have them one week earlier than everyone else then you will be hailed as a visionary. But if you have them five years earlier you will be named a lunatic.

Jones, Barry

34.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

35.

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

36.

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

John Cage

37.

It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.

Oech, Roger Von

38.

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.

39.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

40.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

41.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

42.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

43.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Hyman Rickover

47.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

48.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell