Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

Keynes, John Maynard

The point, simply, is that we are doing more rediscovering these days than discovering coming anew upon truths that ignorant people refused to examine, over the centuries, because the wise people who held custody of the fundamental truths of nature were unpopular.

Williamson, John

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

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

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

Eliot, George

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

Harris, Sidney J.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

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

John Cage

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

10.

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

Townsend, Robert

11.

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.

12.

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

Lynch, David

13.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

14.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

15.

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.

16.

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

Butler, Samuel

17.

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

18.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

19.

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

20.

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

Cotvos

21.

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

22.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

23.

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

Picasso, Pablo

24.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

25.

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

Penny, A. Owen

26.

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

Niblack, Griff

27.

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

Hortense Calisher

28.

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

Emile Chartier

29.

Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.

Hugo, Victor

30.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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.

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

Bunche, Ralph

33.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

34.

All opening moves were the same, like in chess. You don't have to come up with anything new, there's no point, because you're both after the same thing anyway. The game soon finds its own way and it's only at that point that you need a strategy.

Paolo Giordano

35.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

36.

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

Victor Hugo

37.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

38.

A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

39.

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

Chartier, Alain

40.

Ideas are powerful things, requiring not a studious contemplation but an action, even if it is only an inner action. Their acquisition obligates each man in some way to change his life, even if it is only his inner life. They demand to be stood for. They dictate where a man must concentrate his vision. They determine his moral and intellectual priorities. They provide him with allies and make him enemies. In short, ideas impose an interest in their ultimate fate which goes far beyond the realm of the merely reasonable.

Decter, Midge

41.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

42.

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

43.

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

44.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

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.

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.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

48.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

49.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

50.

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