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

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

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

A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.

Maritain, Jacques

All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.

Hill, Napoleon

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

John Cage

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

Ernst, Morris L.

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

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

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

Townsend, Robert

10.

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

11.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

12.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

13.

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.

14.

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

Brown, Les

15.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

16.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

17.

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

Pauling, Linus

18.

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

Walter Bagehot

19.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

20.

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

21.

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

Hodges, Job E.

22.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

23.

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

Butler, Samuel

24.

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

Berry, John

25.

The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.

William O. Douglas

26.

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

Einstein, Albert

27.

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

Victor Hugo

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

31.

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

Hyman Rickover

32.

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

Frost, Robert

33.

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

34.

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

Hortense Calisher

35.

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

36.

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

37.

Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy.

Jim Hightower

38.

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

Anatole France

39.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

40.

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.

41.

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

42.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

43.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

44.

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

Rohn, Jim

45.

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