Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Alfred North Whitehead

Best Quotes about 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

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

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

Proust, Marcel

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

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

Rohn, Jim

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

Townsend, Robert

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

Nelson, George

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.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

10.

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

11.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

12.

I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

Georgia O'Keeffe

13.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

14.

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

Simpson, E. L.

15.

A new idea is like a child. It's easier to conceive than to deliver.

Koysis, Ted

16.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

John Steinbeck

20.

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

Victor Hugo

21.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

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.

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

24.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

25.

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

Saunders, Richard

26.

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

27.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

28.

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

Hodges, Job E.

29.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

30.

Our greatest lack is not money for any undertaking, but rather ideas, If the ideas are good, cash will somehow flow to where it is needed.

Schuller, Robert H.

31.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

32.

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

33.

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

Einstein, Albert

34.

Ideas not coupled with action never become bigger than the brain cells they occupied.

Glasgow, Arnold H.

35.

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

Picasso, Pablo

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.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

38.

It's very good for an idea to be commonplace. The important thing is that a new idea should develop out of what is already there so that it soon becomes an old acquaintance. Old acquaintances aren't by any means always welcome, but at least one can't be mistaken as to who or what they are.

Fitzgerald, Penelope

39.

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

40.

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

Bunche, Ralph

41.

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

Trotsky, Leon

42.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

43.

A good idea plus capable men cannot fail; it is better than money in the bank.

Berry, John

44.

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

John Cage

45.

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

46.

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.

Hector Berlioz

47.

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

48.

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

Frost, Robert

49.

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

50.

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.

Hugo, Victor