Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Anatole France

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Nelson, George

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.

Mann, Thomas

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

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

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

Rivarol, Antoine

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

Canetti, Elias

10.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

11.

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

12.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

13.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

14.

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

Marquis, Don

15.

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

Einstein, Albert

16.

Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

Howard Aiken

17.

Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.

Bachelard, Gaston

18.

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

John Cage

19.

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

Proust, Marcel

20.

The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Horton, Doug

24.

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

25.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

26.

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.

27.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

28.

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

Victor Hugo

29.

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

30.

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

Pauling, Linus

31.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

32.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Hodges, Job E.

36.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

37.

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

Townsend, Robert

38.

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

Anatole France

39.

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

40.

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

Jim Hightower

41.

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

Koysis, Ted

42.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

43.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

44.

I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it.

Samuel Goldwyn

45.

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

Hill, Napoleon

46.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

47.

The most important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.

Bragg, Sir William

48.

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

P. B. Medawar

49.

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

50.

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

Trotsky, Leon