Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Holmes, Oliver Wendell

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Picasso, Pablo

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

Jim Hightower

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

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

Eliot, George

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

John Steinbeck

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

10.

The simple joy of taking an idea into one's own hands and giving it proper form, that's exciting.

Nelson, George

11.

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

Butler, Samuel

12.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

13.

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

Rostand, Jean

14.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

15.

There is no adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact of a new idea.

Bridgman, P. W.

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.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

18.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

19.

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

Trotsky, Leon

20.

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

21.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

22.

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

Frost, Robert

23.

It's a pretty good idea to be of good cheer but not all the time. Just at the most unexpected times.

24.

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

Sutton, Percy

25.

Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.

Bachelard, Gaston

26.

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

27.

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

28.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

29.

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

Niblack, Griff

30.

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

Horton, Doug

31.

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

Hyman Rickover

32.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

33.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

34.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

35.

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

Chartier, Alain

36.

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

Hector Berlioz

37.

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.

38.

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

Avery, Milton

39.

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

40.

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

William O. Douglas

41.

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

Mason, Ken

42.

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.

43.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

44.

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

45.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

46.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

47.

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

Rorty, Richard

48.

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.

49.

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

50.

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

Hubbard, Elbert