Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- John Cage

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

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

P. B. Medawar

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

Kettering, Charles F.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

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

Brande, Dorothea

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

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

The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervor, live for it, and if need be, die for it.

Whitehead, Alfred North

10.

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

Mann, Thomas

11.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

12.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

13.

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

14.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

15.

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

Anatole France

16.

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

Marquis, Don

17.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

18.

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.

19.

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

Hyman Rickover

20.

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

Proust, Marcel

21.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

22.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

23.

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

24.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

25.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don't like their rules, whose would you use?

Carnegie, Dale

26.

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

Bunche, Ralph

27.

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

28.

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

Pound, Ezra

29.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

30.

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

John Steinbeck

31.

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

32.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

33.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

34.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

35.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

36.

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

37.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

38.

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

Penny, A. Owen

39.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

40.

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

Frost, Robert

41.

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

Sutton, Percy

42.

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

43.

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

44.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

45.

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

46.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

47.

Ideas are a capital that bears interest only in the hands of talent.

Rivarol, Antoine

48.

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

Williamson, Marianne

49.

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

Everson, Ray D.