Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Maritain, Jacques

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Koysis, Ted

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

Townsend, Robert

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

Mason, Ken

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

Berry, John

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

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

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

Bunche, Ralph

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

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

Horton, Doug

10.

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

Pound, Ezra

11.

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

Rorty, Richard

12.

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

Mann, Thomas

13.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

14.

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

Hubbard, Elbert

15.

Such as take lodgings in a head that's to be let unfurnished.

Butler, Samuel

16.

It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.

Canetti, Elias

17.

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

James, William

18.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

19.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

20.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

21.

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

22.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

23.

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

Hortense Calisher

24.

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

Everson, Ray D.

25.

I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it.

Samuel Goldwyn

26.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

27.

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

Block, Henry

28.

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

29.

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.

30.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

31.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

John Cage

35.

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

Chartier, Alain

36.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

37.

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

Frost, Robert

38.

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

Nelson, George

39.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

40.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

41.

There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man. --

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

42.

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

Picasso, Pablo

43.

There are well-dressed foolish ideas, just as there are will-dressed fools.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

44.

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

Brown, Les

45.

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.

46.

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

47.

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.

48.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

49.

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

Hyman Rickover

50.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!