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 idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

Hubbard, Elbert

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

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

Walter Bagehot

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

Edison, Thomas A.

So long as new ideas are created, sales will continue to reach new highs.

Brande, Dorothea

Think for thyself one good idea, but known to be thine own, is better than a thousand gleaned from fields by others sown.

Wilson, Alexander

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

Bachelard, Gaston

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

James, William

10.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

11.

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

Proust, Marcel

12.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

13.

Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

Howard Aiken

14.

An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.

Picasso, Pablo

15.

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

16.

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

Avery, Milton

17.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

18.

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

Trotsky, Leon

19.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

20.

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

21.

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.

22.

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

23.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

24.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

25.

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

Jim Hightower

26.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

27.

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

Eliot, George

28.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

29.

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

30.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

31.

Great people talk about ideas. Small people talk about other people.

Gibson, Tobias S.

32.

Go out and buy yourself a five-cent pencil and a ten-cent notebook and begin to write down some million-dollar ideas for yourself.

Grinde, Bob

33.

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

34.

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

Chartier, Alain

35.

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

36.

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

Rorty, Richard

37.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

38.

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

39.

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

Hyman Rickover

40.

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

41.

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

Sutton, Percy

42.

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

43.

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

Hodges, Job E.

44.

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

45.

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

Maritain, Jacques

46.

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

47.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

48.

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

49.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

50.

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.