Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Niblack, Griff

Best Quotes about Ideas

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

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

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

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

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

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

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

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

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

10.

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

11.

It's very good for an idea to be commonplace. The important thing is that a new idea should develop out of what is already there so that it soon becomes an old acquaintance. Old acquaintances aren't by any means always welcome, but at least one can't be mistaken as to who or what they are.

Fitzgerald, Penelope

12.

The most important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.

Bragg, Sir William

13.

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

14.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

15.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

16.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

17.

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

James, William

18.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

19.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

20.

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

Nelson, George

21.

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

Pound, Ezra

22.

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

23.

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

Hortense Calisher

24.

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

Eliot, George

25.

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

Horton, Doug

26.

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

Townsend, Robert

27.

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

P. B. Medawar

28.

It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

29.

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

30.

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

John Cage

31.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

32.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

33.

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

Berry, John

34.

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

Munro, J. Richard

35.

The idea is in my head to put it down is nothing.

Avery, Milton

36.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

37.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

38.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

39.

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

Twain, Mark

40.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

41.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

42.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

43.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

44.

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.

45.

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

Pauling, Linus

46.

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

Victor Hugo

47.

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

Proust, Marcel

48.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

49.

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

50.

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

Walter Bagehot