Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Everson, Ray D.

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Rorty, Richard

It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.

Anatole France

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

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

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

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

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

Walter Bagehot

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

Pauling, Linus

A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

10.

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.

11.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

12.

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

William O. Douglas

13.

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

John Cage

14.

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

Emile Chartier

15.

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

Pound, Ezra

16.

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

17.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

18.

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

Horton, Doug

19.

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

Simpson, E. L.

20.

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

21.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

22.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

23.

The simple joy of taking an idea into one's own hands and giving it proper form, that's exciting.

Nelson, George

24.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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.

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

27.

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

Keynes, John Maynard

28.

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

29.

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

Lynch, David

30.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

31.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

32.

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

Bunche, Ralph

33.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

34.

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

Hector Berlioz

35.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

36.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

37.

Brain cells create ideas. Stress kills brain cells. Stress is not a good idea.

Saunders, Richard

38.

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

39.

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

Brande, Dorothea

40.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

41.

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

Koysis, Ted

42.

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

43.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

44.

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

Victor Hugo

45.

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

46.

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

47.

Ideas lose themselves as quickly as quail, and one must wing them the minute they rise out of the grass, or they are gone.

Kennedy, Thomas F.

48.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

49.

Mere words are cheap and plenty enough, but ideas that rouse and set multitudes thinking come as gold for the mines.

Penny, A. Owen

50.

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