Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Keynes, John Maynard

Best Quotes about Ideas

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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

Nelson, George

Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea.

Rohn, Jim

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

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

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

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

Victor Hugo

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

10.

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

11.

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

Horton, Doug

12.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

13.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

14.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

15.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

16.

Our greatest lack is not money for any undertaking, but rather ideas, If the ideas are good, cash will somehow flow to where it is needed.

Schuller, Robert H.

17.

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.

18.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

19.

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

Walter Bagehot

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.

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

22.

It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.

Gide, Andre

23.

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

John Cage

24.

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

25.

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

26.

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

Townsend, Robert

27.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

28.

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

Mann, Thomas

29.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

30.

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

Simpson, E. L.

31.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

32.

Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.

Harris, Sidney J.

33.

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

Mason, Ken

34.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

35.

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

Rorty, Richard

36.

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.

Hugo, Victor

37.

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

38.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

39.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

40.

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

Pound, Ezra

41.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

42.

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

43.

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

Frost, Robert

44.

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

45.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Niblack, Griff

50.

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

Kettering, Charles F.