Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Anatole France

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Maritain, Jacques

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.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

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

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.

James, William

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

Hugo, Victor

10.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

11.

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

Canetti, Elias

12.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

13.

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

Nelson, George

14.

Mere words are cheap and plenty enough, but ideas that rouse and set multitudes thinking come as gold for the mines.

Penny, A. Owen

15.

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

Victor Hugo

16.

We like to test things... no matter how good an idea sounds, test it first.

Block, Henry

17.

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

Hill, Napoleon

18.

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

19.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

20.

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

21.

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

Jim Hightower

22.

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

Avery, Milton

23.

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

24.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

25.

Once I thought ideas were exceptions not the rule. That is not so. Ideas are so plentiful that they ride by on air. You've only to reach out and snatch one...

Mckeun, Rod

26.

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

John Steinbeck

27.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

28.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

29.

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

30.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

31.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

32.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

33.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

34.

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.

35.

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

36.

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

Koysis, Ted

37.

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

38.

The ideas of a time are like the clothes of a season: they are as arbitrary, as much imposed by some superior will which is seldom explicit. They are utilitarian and political, the instruments of smooth-running government.

Lewis, Wyndham

39.

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

Mann, Thomas

40.

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

Butler, Samuel

41.

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

42.

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

William O. Douglas

43.

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

44.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

45.

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

Horton, Doug

46.

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

Simpson, E. L.

47.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

48.

If a man had as many ideas during the day as he does when he has insomnia, he would make a fortune.

Niblack, Griff

49.

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

50.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim