Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Simpson, E. L.

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Victor Hugo

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

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

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

James, William

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

You have to hatch ideas -- and then hitch them.

Everson, Ray D.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

10.

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

11.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

12.

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

13.

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

Hodges, Job E.

14.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

15.

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

16.

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

Rorty, Richard

17.

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.

Hector Berlioz

18.

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

Marquis, Don

19.

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

20.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

21.

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

Judith Brocklehurst

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Brande, Dorothea

25.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

26.

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

Proust, Marcel

27.

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

28.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

29.

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

30.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

31.

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

Bunche, Ralph

32.

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

Mason, Ken

33.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

34.

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

35.

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

Brown, Les

36.

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

Harris, Sidney J.

37.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

38.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

39.

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

Rostand, Jean

40.

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

Butler, Samuel

41.

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

Jim Hightower

42.

Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.

Bachelard, Gaston

43.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

44.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

45.

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

Nelson, George

46.

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.

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

John Cage