Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Munro, J. Richard

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

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

Chartier, Alain

Ideas won't work unless you do.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

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.

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

Emile Chartier

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

10.

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

11.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

12.

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

13.

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

Trotsky, Leon

14.

You look at any giant corporation, and I mean the biggies, and they all started with a guy with an idea, doing it well.

Robbins, Irvine

15.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

16.

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.

17.

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

18.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

19.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

20.

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

21.

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

Victor Hugo

22.

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

Pound, Ezra

23.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

24.

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

Horton, Doug

25.

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

Einstein, Albert

26.

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

27.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

28.

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

29.

It's a pretty good idea to be of good cheer but not all the time. Just at the most unexpected times.

30.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

31.

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

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.

Lots of people know a good thing the minute the other fellow sees it first.

Hodges, Job E.

34.

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

Simpson, E. L.

35.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

36.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

37.

The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.

Alfred North Whitehead

38.

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

James, William

39.

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

John Cage

40.

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

Frost, Robert

41.

The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

42.

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

43.

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

Rorty, Richard

44.

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.

45.

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

Munro, J. Richard

46.

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

Brown, Les

47.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

48.

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

49.

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

Bunche, Ralph

50.

If a man had as many ideas during the day as he does when he has insomnia, he would make a fortune.

Niblack, Griff