Motivational Quotes

Ideas

Ideas are, in truth, force.

- James, Henry

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

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

Townsend, Robert

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

Frost, Robert

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

Rostand, Jean

Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

Howard Aiken

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

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

Everson, Ray D.

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

Munro, J. Richard

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

10.

The point, simply, is that we are doing more rediscovering these days than discovering coming anew upon truths that ignorant people refused to examine, over the centuries, because the wise people who held custody of the fundamental truths of nature were unpopular.

Williamson, John

11.

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

Berry, John

12.

The world moves, and ideas that were good once are not always good.

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

17.

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

Butler, Samuel

18.

To have a great idea, have a lot of them.

Edison, Thomas A.

19.

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

Penny, A. Owen

20.

We like to test things... no matter how good an idea sounds, test it first.

Block, Henry

21.

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

Twain, Mark

22.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

23.

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

24.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

25.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

26.

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

Hill, Napoleon

27.

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

Chartier, Alain

28.

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

Canetti, Elias

29.

But how shall I get ideas? Keep your wits open! Observe! Observe! Study! Study! But above all, Think! Think! And when a noble image is indelibly impressed upon the mind -- Act!

Marden, Orison Swett

30.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

31.

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

Keynes, John Maynard

32.

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

Maritain, Jacques

33.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

34.

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

35.

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

Rorty, Richard

36.

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

Lynch, David

37.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

38.

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

James, William

39.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

40.

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

William O. Douglas

41.

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

42.

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

Hector Berlioz

43.

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

Einstein, Albert

44.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

45.

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

46.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

47.

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

48.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

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

Walter Bagehot

50.

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