Motivational Quotes

Ideas

Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.

- Whitehead, Alfred North

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

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

Canetti, Elias

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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

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

John Steinbeck

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

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

Hortense Calisher

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

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

10.

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

11.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

12.

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

13.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

14.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

15.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

16.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

17.

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

Rostand, Jean

18.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

19.

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

20.

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

Pauling, Linus

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Lynch, David

25.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

26.

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

Trotsky, Leon

27.

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

Proust, Marcel

28.

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

29.

When an idea reaches critical mass there is no stopping the shift its presence will induce.

Williamson, Marianne

30.

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

Niblack, Griff

31.

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

32.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Townsend, Robert

36.

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

37.

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

Frost, Robert

38.

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

Twain, Mark

39.

Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience.

Hyman Rickover

40.

A man is not necessarily intelligent because he has plenty of ideas, any more than he is a good general because he has plenty of soldiers.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

41.

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

Block, Henry

42.

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

Nelson, George

43.

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

Marquis, Don

44.

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

Anatole France

45.

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.

46.

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

Rohn, Jim

47.

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

Penny, A. Owen

48.

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

Picasso, Pablo

49.

Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things.

Dogen

50.

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

Cotvos