Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Kettering, Charles F.

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

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

Canetti, Elias

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

It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.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

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

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.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

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

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

10.

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

Hugo, Victor

11.

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

Penny, A. Owen

12.

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

13.

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.

14.

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

15.

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

Niblack, Griff

16.

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

Munro, J. Richard

17.

Brain cells create ideas. Stress kills brain cells. Stress is not a good idea.

Saunders, Richard

18.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

19.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

20.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

21.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

22.

The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

Pauling, Linus

23.

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

24.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

25.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

26.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

27.

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

Hyman Rickover

28.

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

29.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

30.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

31.

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

Pound, Ezra

32.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

33.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Maritain, Jacques

37.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

38.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

39.

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

40.

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

Townsend, Robert

41.

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

42.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

43.

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

Berry, John

44.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

45.

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

46.

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.

47.

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

John Steinbeck

48.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

49.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

50.

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