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

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

Bridgman, P. W.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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

John Cage

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

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

Sutton, Percy

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

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

Think for thyself one good idea, but known to be thine own, is better than a thousand gleaned from fields by others sown.

Wilson, Alexander

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Hortense Calisher

13.

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

Picasso, Pablo

14.

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

15.

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

Marquis, Don

16.

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

Einstein, Albert

17.

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

Simpson, E. L.

18.

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

Munro, J. Richard

19.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

John Steinbeck

20.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

21.

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

Brown, Les

22.

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

23.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

24.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

25.

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.

26.

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

27.

To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.

Rostand, Jean

28.

It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.

Gide, Andre

29.

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

Howard Aiken

30.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

31.

People find ideas a bore because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf.

Pound, Ezra

32.

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

Victor Hugo

33.

Brain cells create ideas. Stress kills brain cells. Stress is not a good idea.

Saunders, Richard

34.

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

35.

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.

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

39.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

40.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

41.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

42.

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

Twain, Mark

43.

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

44.

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

Hodges, Job E.

45.

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

Maritain, Jacques

46.

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

47.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

48.

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.

Hugo, Victor

49.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

50.

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