Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Emile Chartier

Best Quotes about 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.

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

James, William

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Bachelard, Gaston

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

Rorty, Richard

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

Niblack, Griff

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

Victor Hugo

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

10.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

11.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

12.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

13.

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

Marquis, Don

14.

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

Simpson, E. L.

15.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

16.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

17.

Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy.

Jim Hightower

18.

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

Berry, John

19.

To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.

Rostand, Jean

20.

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

21.

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

Bunche, Ralph

22.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

23.

The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.

William O. Douglas

24.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

25.

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

26.

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

Hortense Calisher

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Keynes, John Maynard

31.

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

Hyman Rickover

32.

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

Townsend, Robert

33.

Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.

Harris, Sidney J.

34.

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

Proust, Marcel

35.

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

Einstein, Albert

36.

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

Hector Berlioz

37.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

38.

Ideas not coupled with action never become bigger than the brain cells they occupied.

Glasgow, Arnold H.

39.

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

Horton, Doug

40.

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.

Hugo, Victor

41.

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

Munro, J. Richard

42.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

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.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

45.

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

46.

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

John Steinbeck

47.

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you only have one.

Chartier, Alain

48.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

49.

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