Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Proust, Marcel

Best Quotes about Ideas

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.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

Once I thought ideas were exceptions not the rule. That is not so. Ideas are so plentiful that they ride by on air. You've only to reach out and snatch one...

Mckeun, Rod

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

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

Hill, Napoleon

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.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

Ideas are a capital that bears interest only in the hands of talent.

Rivarol, Antoine

10.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

11.

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

12.

A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

13.

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

14.

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

Rostand, Jean

15.

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

16.

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

Hugo, Victor

17.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

18.

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

19.

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

John Steinbeck

20.

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

Saunders, Richard

21.

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.

22.

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.

Hugo, Victor

23.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

24.

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

Pauling, Linus

25.

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

Brande, Dorothea

26.

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

Williamson, Marianne

27.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

28.

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

John Cage

29.

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

Harris, Sidney J.

30.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

31.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

32.

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

33.

It's a pretty good idea to be of good cheer but not all the time. Just at the most unexpected times.

34.

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

Townsend, Robert

35.

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

Eliot, George

36.

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

Simpson, E. L.

37.

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

Penny, A. Owen

38.

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

39.

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

Pound, Ezra

40.

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

41.

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

Hodges, Job E.

42.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

43.

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

Frost, Robert

44.

What you need is an idea.