Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

John Cage

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.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

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

Victor Hugo

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

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

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

Foucault, Michel

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

Townsend, Robert

10.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

14.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

15.

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

Howard Aiken

16.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

17.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

18.

When an idea reaches critical mass there is no stopping the shift its presence will induce.

Williamson, Marianne

19.

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

Rohn, Jim

20.

An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.

Frost, Robert

21.

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

22.

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

Bunche, Ralph

23.

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

24.

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

Mason, Ken

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

28.

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

29.

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

Munro, J. Richard

30.

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

Avery, Milton

31.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

32.

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

33.

The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.

Alfred North Whitehead

34.

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

Brande, Dorothea

35.

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

36.

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

William O. Douglas

37.

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

Berry, John

38.

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

Butler, Samuel

39.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

43.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

44.

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

John Steinbeck

45.

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