Motivational Quotes

Ideas

An idea is never given to you without you being given the power to make it reality. You must, nevertheless, suffer for it.

- Bach, Richard

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

There is no adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact of a new idea.

Bridgman, P. W.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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

James, William

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.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.

Sir Frederick G. Banting

10.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

11.

There are well-dressed foolish ideas, just as there are will-dressed fools.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

12.

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

13.

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

Rohn, Jim

14.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

15.

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

Cotvos

16.

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

Munro, J. Richard

17.

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

18.

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

Proust, Marcel

19.

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

Jim Hightower

20.

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

21.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

22.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

23.

Man's mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

24.

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

25.

To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.

Rostand, Jean

26.

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

Canetti, Elias

27.

So long as new ideas are created, sales will continue to reach new highs.

Brande, Dorothea

28.

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

29.

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

John Steinbeck

30.

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

31.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

32.

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

33.

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

34.

In every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.

Bacon, Francis

35.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

36.

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

37.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

38.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

39.

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

Hortense Calisher

40.

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

41.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

42.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don't like their rules, whose would you use?

Carnegie, Dale

43.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

44.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

45.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

46.

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

Hyman Rickover

47.

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

Anatole France

48.

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

49.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

50.

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

Trotsky, Leon