Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Disraeli, Benjamin

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Samuel Goldwyn

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

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

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

Ernst, Morris L.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

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

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

Proust, Marcel

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

Bachelard, Gaston

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

10.

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

Avery, Milton

11.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

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

13.

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

Keynes, John Maynard

14.

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.

15.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

16.

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

Pound, Ezra

17.

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

18.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

19.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

20.

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

Hyman Rickover

21.

The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

Pauling, Linus

22.

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

Hugo, Victor

23.

There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who hate them.

Emile Chartier

24.

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

Bunche, Ralph

25.

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

26.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

27.

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

28.

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

Brande, Dorothea

29.

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

Picasso, Pablo

30.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

31.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

32.

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

Brown, Les

33.

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.

34.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

35.

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

36.

Such as take lodgings in a head that's to be let unfurnished.

Butler, Samuel

37.

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

Howard Aiken

38.

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

Niblack, Griff

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

Our greatest lack is not money for any undertaking, but rather ideas, If the ideas are good, cash will somehow flow to where it is needed.

Schuller, Robert H.

44.

I'm not impressed with the power of a corporate president. I am impressed with the power of ideas.

Mason, Ken

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

48.

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

49.

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

Rohn, Jim

50.

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