Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

1.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

2.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

3.

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

4.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

5.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

6.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

7.

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

John Cage

8.

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

Townsend, Robert

9.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

10.

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

11.

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

12.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

13.

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

14.

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

Horton, Doug

15.

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

Maritain, Jacques

16.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

17.

The difference between people and ideas is... only superficial.

Rorty, Richard

18.

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

19.

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

20.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

21.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

22.

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

Howard Aiken

23.

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

Rostand, Jean

24.

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

Penny, A. Owen

25.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

26.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

27.

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

Walter Bagehot

28.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

29.

A crank is someone with a new idea -- until it catches on.

Twain, Mark

30.

There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who hate them.

Emile Chartier

31.

It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

Keynes, John Maynard

32.

Great people talk about ideas. Small people talk about other people.

Gibson, Tobias S.

33.

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

Hill, Napoleon

34.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

35.

Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.

Harris, Sidney J.

36.

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you only have one.

Chartier, Alain

37.

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

Jim Hightower

38.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

39.

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

40.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

41.

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

Saunders, Richard

42.

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

43.

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

44.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

45.

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

Cotvos

46.

I'm not impressed with the power of a corporate president. I am impressed with the power of ideas.

Mason, Ken

47.

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