Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

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

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

Alfred North Whitehead

10.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

11.

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

12.

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

James, William

13.

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

14.

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

Walter Bagehot

15.

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

16.

I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

Georgia O'Keeffe

17.

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

18.

Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.

Hugo, Victor

19.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

20.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

21.

It's a pretty good idea to be of good cheer but not all the time. Just at the most unexpected times.

22.

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

Niblack, Griff

23.

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

24.

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

25.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

26.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

27.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

28.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

29.

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

30.

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

Brown, Les

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Horton, Doug

34.

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

Block, Henry

35.

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

Maritain, Jacques

36.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

37.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

38.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

39.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

40.

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

Nelson, George

41.

You have to hatch ideas -- and then hitch them.

Everson, Ray D.

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.

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

Mann, Thomas

45.

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

Hector Berlioz

46.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

47.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

48.

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

49.

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

50.

A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De