Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Pound, Ezra

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

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.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

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

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

They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities.

Einstein, Albert

10.

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

P. B. Medawar

11.

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

Simpson, E. L.

12.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

13.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

14.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

15.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

16.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

17.

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

Twain, Mark

18.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

19.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Everson, Ray D.

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

27.

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.

28.

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

John Steinbeck

29.

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

Townsend, Robert

30.

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

Proust, Marcel

31.

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

Hodges, Job E.

32.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

33.

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

Sutton, Percy

34.

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

Judith Brocklehurst

35.

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

Pauling, Linus

36.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

37.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

38.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

39.

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

Cotvos

40.

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.

41.

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

Frost, Robert

42.

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

Canetti, Elias

43.

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

Harris, Sidney J.

44.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

45.

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

Munro, J. Richard

46.

The idea is in my head to put it down is nothing.

Avery, Milton

47.

Whenever I hear people talking about liberal ideas, I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive. The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

48.

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

49.

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

Walter Bagehot

50.

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

Hubbard, Elbert