Motivational Quotes

Ideas

Mere words are cheap and plenty enough, but ideas that rouse and set multitudes thinking come as gold for the mines.

- Penny, A. Owen

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Rorty, Richard

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

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

John Steinbeck

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

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

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

Proust, Marcel

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

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

John Cage

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

Hugo, Victor

10.

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

Munro, J. Richard

11.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

12.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

13.

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

Hyman Rickover

14.

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

Saunders, Richard

15.

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

16.

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

Nelson, George

17.

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.

18.

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

Pound, Ezra

19.

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

Cotvos

20.

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

Block, Henry

21.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

22.

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

Williamson, Marianne

23.

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

Niblack, Griff

24.

To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.

Rostand, Jean

25.

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

26.

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

Horton, Doug

27.

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

Sutton, Percy

28.

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

29.

The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.

William O. Douglas

30.

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

Einstein, Albert

31.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

32.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

33.

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

Mann, Thomas

34.

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

Hortense Calisher

35.

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.

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Simpson, E. L.

39.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

40.

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

41.

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

Frost, Robert

42.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

43.

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.

44.

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

45.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

46.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

47.

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

48.

Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.

Harris, Sidney J.

49.

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

P. B. Medawar

50.

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