Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Canetti, Elias

Best Quotes about Ideas

In Texas, years ago, almost all of the oil came from surface operations. Then someone got the idea that there were greater sources of supply deeper down. A well was drilled five thousand feet deep. The result? A gusher. Too many of us operate on the surface. We never go deep enough to find supernatural resources. The result is, we never operate at our best. More time and investment is involved to go deep but a gusher will pay off.

Montapert, Alfred A.

But how shall I get ideas? Keep your wits open! Observe! Observe! Study! Study! But above all, Think! Think! And when a noble image is indelibly impressed upon the mind -- Act!

Marden, Orison Swett

It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.

Oech, Roger Von

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.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

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

Rohn, Jim

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

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

Hortense Calisher

Our greatest lack is not money for any undertaking, but rather ideas, If the ideas are good, cash will somehow flow to where it is needed.

Schuller, Robert H.

10.

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

11.

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

12.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

13.

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

14.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

15.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

16.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

17.

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

Hodges, Job E.

18.

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

19.

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

Twain, Mark

20.

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

Brande, Dorothea

21.

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

Hector Berlioz

22.

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

23.

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.

24.

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.

25.

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

26.

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

Marquis, Don

27.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

28.

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

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.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

31.

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

John Cage

32.

Getting an idea should be like sitting down on a pin. It should make you jump up and do something.

Simpson, E. L.

33.

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

P. B. Medawar

34.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

35.

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

Penny, A. Owen

36.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

37.

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

Walter Bagehot

38.

A handsome parson is fit for nothing but ti put ideas into the young woman's heads.

Judith Brocklehurst

39.

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

40.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

41.

The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

Pauling, Linus

42.

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

43.

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

Brown, Les

44.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

45.

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

Einstein, Albert

46.

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