Motivational Quotes

Ideas

Everything begins with an idea.

- Nightingale, Earl

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

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

Frost, Robert

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

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

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

Bunche, Ralph

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

John Steinbeck

Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.

Whitehead, Alfred North

If you pray for only one thing, .let it be for an idea.

Sutton, Percy

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

James, William

10.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

11.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

12.

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

13.

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

Hill, Napoleon

14.

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

Munro, J. Richard

15.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

16.

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

P. B. Medawar

17.

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

18.

It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

Keynes, John Maynard

19.

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

20.

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

21.

Whenever I hear people talking about liberal ideas, I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive. The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

22.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

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

24.

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

Rorty, Richard

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

28.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

29.

No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.

Sir Frederick G. Banting

30.

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

Pauling, Linus

31.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

32.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

33.

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

Canetti, Elias

34.

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

35.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

36.

Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things.

Dogen

37.

It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.

Oech, Roger Von

38.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

39.

Good ideas and innovations must be driven into existence by courageous patience.

Rickover, Hyman G.

40.

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

Maritain, Jacques

41.

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

42.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

43.

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

Hugo, Victor

44.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

45.

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

Hyman Rickover

46.

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

Williamson, Marianne

47.

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

Hortense Calisher

48.

I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

Georgia O'Keeffe

49.

Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.

Bachelard, Gaston

50.

Brain cells create ideas. Stress kills brain cells. Stress is not a good idea.

Saunders, Richard