Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Lynch, David

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

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

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

Hortense Calisher

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

Decter, Midge

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

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

Berry, John

10.

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

11.

Go out and buy yourself a five-cent pencil and a ten-cent notebook and begin to write down some million-dollar ideas for yourself.

Grinde, Bob

12.

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

13.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

15.

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

Hector Berlioz

16.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

17.

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

Everson, Ray D.

18.

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

Koysis, Ted

19.

So many new ideas are at first strange and horrible, though ultimately valuable that a very heavy responsibility rests upon those who would prevent their dissemination.

J. B. S. Haldane

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Canetti, Elias

23.

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

Hodges, Job E.

24.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

25.

To have a great idea, have a lot of them.

Edison, Thomas A.

26.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

27.

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

Brown, Les

28.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

29.

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

30.

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

James, William

31.

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

Niblack, Griff

32.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

33.

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

34.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

35.

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.

36.

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

Bunche, Ralph

37.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

38.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

39.

When an idea reaches critical mass there is no stopping the shift its presence will induce.

Williamson, Marianne

40.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

41.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

42.

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

Sutton, Percy

43.

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

44.

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

Townsend, Robert

45.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

46.

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

47.

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

John Cage

48.

The difference between people and ideas is... only superficial.

Rorty, Richard

49.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

50.

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