Motivational Quotes

Ideas

Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.

- Kierkegaard, S°ren

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Avery, Milton

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

Hector Berlioz

All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.

Hill, Napoleon

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 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.

They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities.

Einstein, Albert

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

P. B. Medawar

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

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

Twain, Mark

10.

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

Trotsky, Leon

11.

It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

12.

A handsome parson is fit for nothing but ti put ideas into the young woman's heads.

Judith Brocklehurst

13.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

14.

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

15.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

16.

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

17.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

18.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

19.

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

John Cage

20.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

25.

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

26.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

27.

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

Penny, A. Owen

28.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

29.

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

Block, Henry

30.

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

James, William

31.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

32.

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

33.

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

Victor Hugo

34.

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

Canetti, Elias

35.

There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who hate them.

Emile Chartier

36.

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

37.

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

38.

I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it.

Samuel Goldwyn

39.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

40.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

41.

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

42.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

43.

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

Maritain, Jacques

44.

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

45.

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

46.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

47.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

48.

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

Frost, Robert

49.

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

50.

An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.

Picasso, Pablo