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

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

Brown, Les

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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.

No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.

Sir Frederick G. Banting

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

Frost, Robert

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

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.

Brain cells create ideas. Stress kills brain cells. Stress is not a good idea.

Saunders, Richard

10.

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

Proust, Marcel

11.

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

Horton, Doug

12.

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

Rorty, Richard

13.

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

Judith Brocklehurst

14.

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

Lynch, David

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.

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

Hodges, Job E.

17.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don't like their rules, whose would you use?

Carnegie, Dale

18.

Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: (1) It's completely impossible. (2) It's possible, but it's not worth doing. (3) I said it was a good idea all along.

Clarke, Arthur C.

19.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

23.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

24.

There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than politicians think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas... that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.

Foucault, Michel

25.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

26.

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

Anatole France

27.

Ideas are invented only as correctives to the past. Through repeated rectification of this kind one may hope to disengage an idea that is valid.

Bachelard, Gaston

28.

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

Butler, Samuel

29.

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.

30.

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

Trotsky, Leon

31.

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

32.

The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.

P. B. Medawar

33.

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

Brande, Dorothea

34.

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

Walter Bagehot

35.

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

Hyman Rickover

36.

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

37.

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

Townsend, Robert

38.

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

Twain, Mark

39.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Sutton, Percy

48.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

49.

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

50.

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