Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Samuel Goldwyn

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Bunche, Ralph

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

Proust, Marcel

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

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

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

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

Penny, A. Owen

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

P. B. Medawar

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

Kettering, Charles F.

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Cotvos

13.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

14.

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

Eliot, George

15.

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.

16.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

17.

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

Sutton, Percy

18.

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

Munro, J. Richard

19.

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

Harris, Sidney J.

20.

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

Hortense Calisher

21.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

22.

There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who hate them.

Emile Chartier

23.

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wander whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

24.

I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

Georgia O'Keeffe

25.

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

Nelson, George

26.

It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.

Canetti, Elias

27.

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

Twain, Mark

28.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

29.

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.

30.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

31.

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

32.

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

Hodges, Job E.

33.

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

34.

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

Niblack, Griff

35.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

36.

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

Chartier, Alain

37.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

38.

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

39.

Ideas not coupled with action never become bigger than the brain cells they occupied.

Glasgow, Arnold H.

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

Victor Hugo

42.

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

43.

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

James, William

44.

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

Walter Bagehot

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Judith Brocklehurst

49.

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

John Cage

50.

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

John Steinbeck