Motivational Quotes

Ideas

The best ideas are common property.

- Seneca

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

An idea is never given to you without you being given the power to make it reality. You must, nevertheless, suffer for it.

Bach, Richard

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

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

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

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

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

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

Proust, Marcel

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.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

11.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

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

Eliot, George

13.

Our greatest lack is not money for any undertaking, but rather ideas, If the ideas are good, cash will somehow flow to where it is needed.

Schuller, Robert H.

14.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

15.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

16.

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.

17.

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

18.

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

Hugo, Victor

19.

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

Picasso, Pablo

20.

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

Koysis, Ted

21.

I'm not impressed with the power of a corporate president. I am impressed with the power of ideas.

Mason, Ken

22.

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

Hodges, Job E.

23.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

24.

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

Niblack, Griff

25.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

26.

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

Rohn, Jim

27.

The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.

William O. Douglas

28.

So many new ideas are at first strange and horrible, though ultimately valuable that a very heavy responsibility rests upon those who would prevent their dissemination.

J. B. S. Haldane

29.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

30.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

31.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

32.

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

Nelson, George

33.

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

34.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

35.

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

Twain, Mark

36.

There is no adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact of a new idea.

Bridgman, P. W.

37.

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

James, William

38.

Good ideas are a dime a dozen, bad ones are free.

Horton, Doug

39.

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

40.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

41.

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

Butler, Samuel

42.

It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.

Anatole France

43.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

44.

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

Rorty, Richard

45.

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

Pound, Ezra

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.

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

Emile Chartier

48.

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

Maritain, Jacques

49.

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.

50.

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