Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Lynch, David

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Penny, A. Owen

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

Block, Henry

Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy.

Jim Hightower

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

Rostand, Jean

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

This is my answer to the gap between ideas and action - I will write it out.

Hortense Calisher

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

Kettering, Charles F.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

10.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

11.

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

Howard Aiken

12.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

13.

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

14.

Think for thyself one good idea, but known to be thine own, is better than a thousand gleaned from fields by others sown.

Wilson, Alexander

15.

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

Simpson, E. L.

16.

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

Nelson, George

17.

Many ideas are good for a limited time -- not forever.

Townsend, Robert

18.

The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.

P. B. Medawar

19.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

24.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

25.

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

Chartier, Alain

26.

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

27.

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

Anatole France

28.

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

Mann, Thomas

29.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

30.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

31.

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

Emile Chartier

32.

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

33.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

34.

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

35.

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

Koysis, Ted

36.

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

Twain, Mark

37.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

38.

They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities.

Einstein, Albert

39.

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

Rorty, Richard

40.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

41.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

42.

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

Hyman Rickover

43.

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.

44.

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

Brown, Les

45.

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

Picasso, Pablo

46.

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

Cotvos

47.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

48.

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

49.

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

Frost, Robert

50.

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