Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Holmes, Oliver Wendell

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Maritain, Jacques

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

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

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

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

Berry, John

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

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

Jim Hightower

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

Rorty, Richard

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

10.

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

Townsend, Robert

11.

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

Horton, Doug

12.

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

13.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

14.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

15.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

16.

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

17.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

18.

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

19.

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

Frost, Robert

20.

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

21.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

22.

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

Munro, J. Richard

23.

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

Avery, Milton

24.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

25.

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

26.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

27.

No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.

Sir Frederick G. Banting

28.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

29.

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

Simpson, E. L.

30.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

31.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

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

Everson, Ray D.

33.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

34.

Take the obvious, add a cupful of brains, a generous pinch of imagination, a bucketful of courage and daring, stir well and bring to a boil.

Baruch, Bernard M.

35.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

36.

It's very good for an idea to be commonplace. The important thing is that a new idea should develop out of what is already there so that it soon becomes an old acquaintance. Old acquaintances aren't by any means always welcome, but at least one can't be mistaken as to who or what they are.

Fitzgerald, Penelope

37.

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

Koysis, Ted

38.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

39.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

40.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

41.

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

Niblack, Griff

42.

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

Hill, Napoleon

43.

Ideas lose themselves as quickly as quail, and one must wing them the minute they rise out of the grass, or they are gone.

Kennedy, Thomas F.

44.

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

Pound, Ezra

45.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

46.

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

Anatole France

47.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

48.

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

James, William

49.

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

50.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young