Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Walter Bagehot

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

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

William O. Douglas

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

Kettering, Charles F.

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

Marquis, Don

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

Frost, Robert

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

10.

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

Anatole France

11.

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

Munro, J. Richard

12.

It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.

Oech, Roger Von

13.

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

14.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

15.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

16.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

17.

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

18.

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

Sutton, Percy

19.

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

Maritain, Jacques

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Pound, Ezra

23.

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

Niblack, Griff

24.

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

25.

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

Horton, Doug

26.

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

Cotvos

27.

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

Pauling, Linus

28.

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.

29.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

30.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

31.

Think for thyself one good idea, but known to be thine own, is better than a thousand gleaned from fields by others sown.

Wilson, Alexander

32.

We like to test things... no matter how good an idea sounds, test it first.

Block, Henry

33.

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

Brown, Les

34.

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

35.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

36.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

37.

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

Trotsky, Leon

38.

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

John Steinbeck

39.

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

40.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

41.

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

Picasso, Pablo

42.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

43.

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

Hortense Calisher