Motivational Quotes

Ideas

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

- H. L. Mencken

Best Quotes about Ideas

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

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

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

Hugo, Victor

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

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

Trotsky, Leon

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

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

Canetti, Elias

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

Walter Bagehot

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

10.

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

Everson, Ray D.

11.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

12.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

13.

All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.

Hill, Napoleon

14.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

15.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

16.

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

John Cage

17.

To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.

Rostand, Jean

18.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

19.

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

20.

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

Butler, Samuel

21.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

22.

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

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'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

25.

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

Frost, Robert

26.

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

Hodges, Job E.

27.

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

28.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

H. L. Mencken

29.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

30.

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

Brown, Les

31.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

32.

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

William O. Douglas

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Picasso, Pablo

36.

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

Brande, Dorothea

37.

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

Einstein, Albert

38.

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

39.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

40.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

41.

If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.

Mann, Thomas

42.

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

P. B. Medawar

43.

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

44.

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

Williamson, Marianne

45.

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

Horton, Doug

46.

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

Harris, Sidney J.

47.

A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it.

Proust, Marcel

48.

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

49.

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

50.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest