Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Lynch, David

Best Quotes about Ideas

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.

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

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

Saunders, Richard

There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who hate them.

Emile Chartier

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

Block, Henry

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

Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea.

Rohn, Jim

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

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

10.

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

Brande, Dorothea

11.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

12.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

13.

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

Victor Hugo

14.

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

Hill, Napoleon

15.

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

Cotvos

16.

A great idea is usually original to more than one discoverer. Great ideas come when the world needs them. Great ideas surround the world's ignorance and press for admission.

Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart

17.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

18.

To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.

Rostand, Jean

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

22.

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

23.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

24.

I'm not impressed with the power of a corporate president. I am impressed with the power of ideas.

Mason, Ken

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Hugo, Victor

28.

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

Penny, A. Owen

29.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

30.

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

Rorty, Richard

31.

Good ideas are a dime a dozen, bad ones are free.

Horton, Doug

32.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

33.

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

Anatole France

34.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

35.

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

Howard Aiken

36.

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

37.

It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

38.

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

Pound, Ezra

39.

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

Eliot, George

40.

Ideas not coupled with action never become bigger than the brain cells they occupied.

Glasgow, Arnold H.

41.

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

Mann, Thomas

42.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

43.

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

Koysis, Ted

44.

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

45.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

46.

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

47.

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

Munro, J. Richard

48.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

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

John Cage

50.

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