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

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

Anatole France

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.

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

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

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

Chartier, Alain

The most important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.

Bragg, Sir William

Get your ideas on paper and study them. Do not let them go to waste!

Brown, Les

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

10.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

11.

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

12.

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

Niblack, Griff

13.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

14.

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

Twain, Mark

15.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

16.

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

Maritain, Jacques

17.

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

Bunche, Ralph

18.

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

Hector Berlioz

19.

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

Walter Bagehot

20.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

21.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

22.

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

Avery, Milton

23.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

24.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

25.

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

Rohn, Jim

26.

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

Canetti, Elias

27.

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

Saunders, Richard

28.

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

29.

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

Berry, John

30.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

31.

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

32.

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

Horton, Doug

33.

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

Hugo, Victor

34.

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

Mann, Thomas

35.

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

P. B. Medawar

36.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

37.

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

Block, Henry

38.

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

Rorty, Richard

39.

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

40.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

44.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

45.

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

Everson, Ray D.

46.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

47.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

48.

Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy.

Jim Hightower

49.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

50.

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