Motivational Quotes

Ideas

They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities.

- Einstein, Albert

Best Quotes about Ideas

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

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

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

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

Walter Bagehot

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

Simpson, E. L.

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

Sutton, Percy

An idea is never given to you without you being given the power to make it reality. You must, nevertheless, suffer for it.

Bach, Richard

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

Hodges, Job E.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

10.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

11.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

12.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

13.

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

14.

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

Hubbard, Elbert

15.

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

John Steinbeck

16.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

17.

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

Pound, Ezra

18.

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

Victor Hugo

19.

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

Proust, Marcel

20.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

21.

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

Picasso, Pablo

22.

Whenever I hear people talking about liberal ideas, I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive. The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

23.

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

Block, Henry

24.

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

Keynes, John Maynard

25.

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

Everson, Ray D.

26.

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

Berry, John

27.

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

28.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

29.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

30.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

31.

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

Twain, Mark

32.

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.

33.

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

Maritain, Jacques

34.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.

Mann, Thomas

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

44.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

45.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

46.

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

Townsend, Robert