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

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

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

Munro, J. Richard

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

Rivarol, Antoine

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

Twain, Mark

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

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

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

Hill, Napoleon

10.

Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.

Whitehead, Alfred North

11.

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

12.

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

Koysis, Ted

13.

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

14.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

15.

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

Block, Henry

16.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

17.

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

Maritain, Jacques

18.

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

Hodges, Job E.

19.

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

Rohn, Jim

20.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

21.

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

22.

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

23.

Many ideas are good for a limited time -- not forever.

Townsend, Robert

24.

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

John Steinbeck

25.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

26.

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

27.

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

Pound, Ezra

28.

Clarke, Arthur C.

29.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

30.

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

Walter Bagehot

31.

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

P. B. Medawar

32.

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

33.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

34.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Marquis, Don

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Berry, John

41.

Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

42.

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

Horton, Doug

43.

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

Hugo, Victor

44.

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

45.

The ideas dictate everything, you have to be true to that or you're dead.

Lynch, David

46.

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

Saunders, Richard

47.

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

Brande, Dorothea

48.

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