Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Rorty, Richard

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

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

Cotvos

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

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

Jim Hightower

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

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

Frost, Robert

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

Harris, Sidney J.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

10.

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.

11.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

12.

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

Victor Hugo

13.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

14.

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

Chartier, Alain

15.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

16.

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

Hugo, Victor

17.

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

18.

If you want to kill any idea in the world today, get a committee working on it.

Kettering, Charles F.

19.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

20.

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

Hugo, Victor

21.

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

Trotsky, Leon

22.

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

23.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

24.

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

Pauling, Linus

25.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

26.

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.

Baruch, Bernard M.

27.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

28.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

29.

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

John Cage

30.

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

Brown, Les

31.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

32.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

33.

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

Penny, A. Owen

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.

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

Rorty, Richard

36.

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

Einstein, Albert

37.

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.

38.

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

39.

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

Hyman Rickover

40.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

41.

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

42.

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

Rostand, Jean

43.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

44.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

45.

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

Picasso, Pablo

46.

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

47.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

48.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

49.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

50.

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