Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

If you have the same ideas as everybody else but have them one week earlier than everyone else then you will be hailed as a visionary. But if you have them five years earlier you will be named a lunatic.

Jones, Barry

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

John Steinbeck

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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

P. B. Medawar

Go out and buy yourself a five-cent pencil and a ten-cent notebook and begin to write down some million-dollar ideas for yourself.

Grinde, Bob

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

Pound, Ezra

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

Simpson, E. L.

10.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

11.

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

12.

Not the one who has many ideas, but the one who has a single conviction may become a great person.

Cotvos

13.

So many new ideas are at first strange and horrible, though ultimately valuable that a very heavy responsibility rests upon those who would prevent their dissemination.

J. B. S. Haldane

14.

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

Avery, Milton

15.

This is my answer to the gap between ideas and action - I will write it out.

Hortense Calisher

16.

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

Trotsky, Leon

17.

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

18.

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

Canetti, Elias

19.

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

20.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

21.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

22.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

23.

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

Niblack, Griff

24.

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

Rohn, Jim

25.

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

Horton, Doug

26.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

27.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

28.

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

Hector Berlioz

29.

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

Lynch, David

30.

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

31.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

32.

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

Rorty, Richard

33.

Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things.

Dogen

34.

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

James, William

35.

Whenever I hear people talking about liberal ideas, I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive. The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

36.

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

Sutton, Percy

37.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Harris, Sidney J.

41.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

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.

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

Chartier, Alain

44.

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

Pauling, Linus

45.

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

46.

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

47.

All opening moves were the same, like in chess. You don't have to come up with anything new, there's no point, because you're both after the same thing anyway. The game soon finds its own way and it's only at that point that you need a strategy.

Paolo Giordano

48.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

49.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

50.

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

Bachelard, Gaston