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

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

William O. Douglas

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.

P. B. Medawar

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

Penny, A. Owen

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

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

Harris, Sidney J.

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

Anatole France

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.

10.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

11.

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

12.

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

13.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

14.

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

Avery, Milton

15.

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

Mason, Ken

16.

Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

17.

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

18.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

19.

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

20.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Einstein, Albert

24.

There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man. --

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

25.

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

Berry, John

26.

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

27.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

28.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

29.

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

Frost, Robert

30.

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

31.

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

Hector Berlioz

32.

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

Hugo, Victor

33.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

34.

Our greatest lack is not money for any undertaking, but rather ideas, If the ideas are good, cash will somehow flow to where it is needed.

Schuller, Robert H.

35.

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

36.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

37.

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

Butler, Samuel

38.

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

39.

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

Saunders, Richard

40.

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

Brande, Dorothea

41.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don't like their rules, whose would you use?

Carnegie, Dale

42.

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

Lynch, David

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

47.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

48.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

49.

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