Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

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

Chartier, Alain

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

Horton, Doug

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

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

Penny, A. Owen

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

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

Frost, Robert

Ideas are invented only as correctives to the past. Through repeated rectification of this kind one may hope to disengage an idea that is valid.

Bachelard, Gaston

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

10.

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

Hyman Rickover

11.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

12.

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Good ideas and innovations must be driven into existence by courageous patience.

Rickover, Hyman G.

16.

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

Lynch, David

17.

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

18.

It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

The most important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.

Bragg, Sir William

20.

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

William O. Douglas

21.

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

Emile Chartier

22.

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

John Cage

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.

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

25.

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

Koysis, Ted

26.

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

27.

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

Hector Berlioz

28.

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

Einstein, Albert

29.

Get your ideas on paper and study them. Do not let them go to waste!

Brown, Les

30.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

31.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

32.

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

33.

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

Jim Hightower

34.

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

Pauling, Linus

35.

If a man had as many ideas during the day as he does when he has insomnia, he would make a fortune.

Niblack, Griff

36.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

37.

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

Hugo, Victor

38.

A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.

Maritain, Jacques

39.

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

Munro, J. Richard

40.

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

Rorty, Richard

41.

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

Butler, Samuel

42.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

43.

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

Everson, Ray D.

44.

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

Cotvos

45.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

46.

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

47.

I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it.

Samuel Goldwyn

48.

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

Sutton, Percy

49.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

50.

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.