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

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

Harris, Sidney J.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

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

Horton, Doug

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

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

Ideas won't work unless you do.

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

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

John Steinbeck

13.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

14.

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

P. B. Medawar

15.

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

16.

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

Koysis, Ted

17.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

18.

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

Cotvos

19.

Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.

Trotsky, Leon

20.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

21.

The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

Pauling, Linus

22.

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

Twain, Mark

23.

Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.

Hugo, Victor

24.

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

Picasso, Pablo

25.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

26.

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

27.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

28.

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

Hill, Napoleon

29.

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

Proust, Marcel

30.

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

Nelson, George

31.

Take the obvious, add a cupful of brains, a generous pinch of imagination, a bucketful of courage and daring, stir well and bring to a boil.

Baruch, Bernard M.

32.

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

33.

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.

34.

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

Williamson, Marianne

35.

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.

36.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

37.

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

38.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don't like their rules, whose would you use?

Carnegie, Dale

39.

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

40.

Man's fear of ideas is probably the greatest dike holding back human knowledge and happiness.

Ernst, Morris L.

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Hortense Calisher

44.

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

45.

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

Jim Hightower

46.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

47.

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

48.

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

Victor Hugo

49.

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

50.

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

Howard Aiken