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

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

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

Mason, Ken

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

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

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

Frost, Robert

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

Hodges, Job E.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

If you have the same ideas as everybody else but have them one week earlier than everyone else then you will be hailed as a visionary. But if you have them five years earlier you will be named a lunatic.

Jones, Barry

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

Berry, John

10.

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

Munro, J. Richard

11.

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

Avery, Milton

12.

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

13.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

14.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

15.

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

Chartier, Alain

16.

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

17.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

18.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

19.

Not the one who has many ideas, but the one who has a single conviction may become a great person.

Cotvos

20.

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

John Cage

21.

The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervor, live for it, and if need be, die for it.

Whitehead, Alfred North

22.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

23.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

24.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

25.

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

Butler, Samuel

26.

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

Hyman Rickover

27.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Einstein, Albert

31.

Gide, Andre

32.

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

33.

It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.

Oech, Roger Von

34.

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

35.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

36.

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

37.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

38.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

39.

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

Canetti, Elias

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Pound, Ezra

43.

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

44.

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

Block, Henry

45.

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

46.

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

Emile Chartier

47.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

48.

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

Horton, Doug

49.

Ideas too are a life and a world.