Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

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

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

Emile Chartier

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

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

Ideas won't work unless you do.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Rorty, Richard

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.

10.

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

Frost, Robert

11.

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

Koysis, Ted

12.

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

13.

An idea is never given to you without you being given the power to make it reality. You must, nevertheless, suffer for it.

Bach, Richard

14.

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

Everson, Ray D.

15.

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

Bunche, Ralph

16.

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

Townsend, Robert

17.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

18.

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

Brown, Les

19.

A handsome parson is fit for nothing but ti put ideas into the young woman's heads.

Judith Brocklehurst

20.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

21.

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

22.

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

Cotvos

23.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

24.

When an idea reaches critical mass there is no stopping the shift its presence will induce.

Williamson, Marianne

25.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

26.

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

Einstein, Albert

27.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

28.

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

29.

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

Maritain, Jacques

30.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

31.

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

32.

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

Nelson, George

33.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

34.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

35.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

36.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

37.

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

Twain, Mark

38.

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

Horton, Doug

39.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

40.

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

Pound, Ezra

41.

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

42.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

43.

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

Victor Hugo

44.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

45.

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

Berry, John

46.

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

Walter Bagehot

47.

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

48.

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

Mann, Thomas

49.

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

50.

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