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

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

Hugo, Victor

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

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

It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

Keynes, John Maynard

Getting an idea should be like sitting down on a pin. It should make you jump up and do something.

Simpson, E. L.

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

Williamson, Marianne

A crank is someone with a new idea -- until it catches on.

Twain, Mark

10.

There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than politicians think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas... that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.

Foucault, Michel

11.

Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.

Whitehead, Alfred North

12.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

13.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

14.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

John Steinbeck

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Koysis, Ted

18.

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

Victor Hugo

19.

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

Bunche, Ralph

20.

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

Proust, Marcel

21.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

22.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

23.

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

24.

Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: (1) It's completely impossible. (2) It's possible, but it's not worth doing. (3) I said it was a good idea all along.

Clarke, Arthur C.

25.

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

Hyman Rickover

26.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

27.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

28.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

29.

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

30.

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

Butler, Samuel

31.

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

Eliot, George

32.

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

Brown, Les

33.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

34.

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

35.

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.

36.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

37.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Pound, Ezra

41.

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

42.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

43.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

44.

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

Walter Bagehot

45.

A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.

James, William

46.

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

Townsend, Robert

47.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

48.

Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea.

Rohn, Jim

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.

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