Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- P. B. Medawar

Best Quotes about Ideas

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

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

Maritain, Jacques

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

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.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

Man's mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

There is no adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact of a new idea.

Bridgman, P. W.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

10.

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

Cotvos

11.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

12.

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

Mason, Ken

13.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Horton, Doug

17.

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

18.

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

John Cage

19.

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

Brown, Les

20.

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

Victor Hugo

21.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

22.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

23.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

24.

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

Jim Hightower

25.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

26.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

27.

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

28.

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

Sutton, Percy

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

32.

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.

Hector Berlioz

33.

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

34.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

35.

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

Hortense Calisher

36.

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

37.

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

Chartier, Alain

38.

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

Avery, Milton

39.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

40.

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

41.

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wander whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

42.

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

Bunche, Ralph

43.

A handsome parson is fit for nothing but ti put ideas into the young woman's heads.

Judith Brocklehurst

44.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

45.

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