Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Bachelard, Gaston

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

Emile Chartier

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

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

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

Howard Aiken

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.

Hector Berlioz

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

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.

10.

Get your ideas on paper and study them. Do not let them go to waste!

Brown, Les

11.

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

Avery, Milton

12.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

13.

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

Marquis, Don

14.

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

Townsend, Robert

15.

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

Block, Henry

16.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

17.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

18.

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

19.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

20.

Ideas not coupled with action never become bigger than the brain cells they occupied.

Glasgow, Arnold H.

21.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

22.

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.

23.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

24.

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

Butler, Samuel

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Niblack, Griff

29.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

Eliot, George

33.

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

Canetti, Elias

34.

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

Nelson, George

35.

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

36.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

37.

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

William O. Douglas

38.

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

Munro, J. Richard

39.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

40.

If you pray for only one thing, .let it be for an idea.

Sutton, Percy

41.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

42.

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

43.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

44.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

45.

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

Einstein, Albert

46.

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

Rorty, Richard

47.

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

Picasso, Pablo

48.

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

49.

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

Horton, Doug

50.

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