Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

1.

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

2.

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

3.

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

Eliot, George

4.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

5.

No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.

Sir Frederick G. Banting

6.

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

Sutton, Percy

7.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

8.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

9.

The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

10.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

11.

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

Bunche, Ralph

12.

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

Townsend, Robert

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Picasso, Pablo

16.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

17.

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

18.

Man's mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

19.

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

20.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

21.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

22.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

23.

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

24.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

25.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

26.

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

Nelson, George

27.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

28.

Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.

Trotsky, Leon

29.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

30.

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

Saunders, Richard

31.

A handsome parson is fit for nothing but ti put ideas into the young woman's heads.

Judith Brocklehurst

32.

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

Block, Henry

33.

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

34.

It's a pretty good idea to be of good cheer but not all the time. Just at the most unexpected times.

35.

It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.

Canetti, Elias

36.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

37.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

38.

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

Jim Hightower

39.

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

Hyman Rickover

40.

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

41.

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

Berry, John

42.

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

John Cage

43.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

44.

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