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

It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man. --

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Maritain, Jacques

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

Trotsky, Leon

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

Emile Chartier

The point, simply, is that we are doing more rediscovering these days than discovering coming anew upon truths that ignorant people refused to examine, over the centuries, because the wise people who held custody of the fundamental truths of nature were unpopular.

Williamson, John

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

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

Niblack, Griff

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

10.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

11.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

12.

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

13.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

14.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

15.

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

Cotvos

16.

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

17.

An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.

Picasso, Pablo

18.

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

Jim Hightower

19.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

20.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

21.

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

22.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

23.

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

Butler, Samuel

24.

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.

25.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

26.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

27.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

28.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

29.

If you want to get across an idea, wrap it up in a person.

Bunche, Ralph

30.

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

Keynes, John Maynard

31.

Good ideas and innovations must be driven into existence by courageous patience.

Rickover, Hyman G.

32.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

33.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

34.

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

Koysis, Ted

35.

When an idea reaches critical mass there is no stopping the shift its presence will induce.

Williamson, Marianne

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Brande, Dorothea

39.

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

James, William

40.

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

Hyman Rickover

41.

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

42.

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

Hodges, Job E.

43.

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

Penny, A. Owen

44.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

45.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

46.

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.

47.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

48.

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

49.

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.

50.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.