Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Rostand, Jean

Best Quotes about Ideas

No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.

Sir Frederick G. Banting

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

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

John Cage

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

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

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

Eliot, George

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

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

10.

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

Bunche, Ralph

11.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

12.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

13.

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

Hodges, Job E.

14.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

18.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

19.

Such as take lodgings in a head that's to be let unfurnished.

Butler, Samuel

20.

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

21.

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

Rostand, Jean

22.

A crank is someone with a new idea -- until it catches on.

Twain, Mark

23.

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

Jim Hightower

24.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

25.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

26.

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

27.

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

Chartier, Alain

28.

The ideas dictate everything, you have to be true to that or you're dead.

Lynch, David

29.

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

Walter Bagehot

30.

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

Judith Brocklehurst

31.

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

32.

If you have the same ideas as everybody else but have them one week earlier than everyone else then you will be hailed as a visionary. But if you have them five years earlier you will be named a lunatic.

Jones, Barry

33.

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

James, William

34.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

35.

The point, simply, is that we are doing more rediscovering these days than discovering coming anew upon truths that ignorant people refused to examine, over the centuries, because the wise people who held custody of the fundamental truths of nature were unpopular.

Williamson, John

36.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

37.

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

Pauling, Linus

38.

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

Sutton, Percy

39.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

40.

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

Townsend, Robert

41.

Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea.

Rohn, Jim

42.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

43.

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

Picasso, Pablo

44.

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

Saunders, Richard

45.

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

46.

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

P. B. Medawar

47.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

48.

A new idea is like a child. It's easier to conceive than to deliver.

Koysis, Ted

49.

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