Motivational Quotes

Ideas

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

- Brown, Ron

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.

Frost, Robert

Whenever I hear people talking about liberal ideas, I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive. The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

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

Proust, Marcel

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

Trotsky, Leon

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

Victor Hugo

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

Hubbard, Elbert

10.

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

Hill, Napoleon

11.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

12.

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

13.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

14.

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

15.

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

Einstein, Albert

16.

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

17.

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

John Cage

18.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

19.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

20.

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

21.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

22.

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

Mann, Thomas

23.

The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.

P. B. Medawar

24.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

25.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

26.

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

Twain, Mark

27.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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.

31.

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

Marquis, Don

32.

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

33.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

34.

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

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.

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

37.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

38.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

39.

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

Eliot, George

40.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

41.

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

42.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

43.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

44.

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

Brande, Dorothea

45.

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

Williamson, Marianne

46.

A good idea plus capable men cannot fail; it is better than money in the bank.

Berry, John

47.

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

Koysis, Ted

48.

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

49.

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

Jim Hightower

50.

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.