Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Disraeli, Benjamin

Best Quotes about Ideas

Ideas won't work unless you do.

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

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

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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

Lynch, David

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

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

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

Koysis, Ted

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

Bachelard, Gaston

10.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

11.

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

12.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

13.

Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the ocean desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny.

Carl Schurz

14.

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

Berry, John

15.

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

16.

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wander whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

17.

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

18.

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

Simpson, E. L.

19.

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

Maritain, Jacques

20.

You look at any giant corporation, and I mean the biggies, and they all started with a guy with an idea, doing it well.

Robbins, Irvine

21.

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

Niblack, Griff

22.

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

23.

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

Pound, Ezra

24.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

25.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

26.

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

27.

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

Marquis, Don

28.

All opening moves were the same, like in chess. You don't have to come up with anything new, there's no point, because you're both after the same thing anyway. The game soon finds its own way and it's only at that point that you need a strategy.

Paolo Giordano

29.

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

Hortense Calisher

30.

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

Townsend, Robert

31.

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

Block, Henry

32.

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

33.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

34.

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

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.

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

Hugo, Victor

37.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

38.

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

Pauling, Linus

39.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

40.

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

41.

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

Howard Aiken

42.

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

43.

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

Avery, Milton

44.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

45.

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

Eliot, George

46.

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

Mason, Ken

47.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

48.

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.

49.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

50.

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

Proust, Marcel