Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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.

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Walter Bagehot

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

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.

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

Hugo, Victor

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

James, William

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

Alfred North Whitehead

Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience.

Hyman Rickover

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

Niblack, Griff

10.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

11.

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.

12.

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

13.

It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

14.

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

15.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

16.

It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

Keynes, John Maynard

17.

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

Sutton, Percy

18.

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

John Steinbeck

19.

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

Judith Brocklehurst

20.

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you only have one.

Chartier, Alain

21.

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

Nelson, George

22.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

23.

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

P. B. Medawar

24.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

25.

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

Horton, Doug

26.

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

Hector Berlioz

27.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

28.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

29.

If you want to get across an idea, wrap it up in a person.

Bunche, Ralph

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.

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

32.

Clarke, Arthur C.

33.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

34.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

35.

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

36.

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

Hugo, Victor

37.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

38.

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

Avery, Milton

39.

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

Rohn, Jim

40.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

41.

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

Proust, Marcel

42.

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

Trotsky, Leon

43.

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

44.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

45.

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

Koysis, Ted

46.

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

47.

It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.

Anatole France

48.