Motivational Quotes

Ideas

What you need is an idea.

- Lear, William P.

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Pound, Ezra

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

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

Jim Hightower

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

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

Frost, Robert

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

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

Mann, Thomas

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

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.

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

Hill, Napoleon

11.

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

Lynch, David

12.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

13.

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

14.

Think for thyself one good idea, but known to be thine own, is better than a thousand gleaned from fields by others sown.

Wilson, Alexander

15.

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.

16.

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

Harris, Sidney J.

17.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

18.

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

Pauling, Linus

19.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

20.

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

21.

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.

22.

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

Picasso, Pablo

23.

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

James, William

24.

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

John Steinbeck

25.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

26.

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

Keynes, John Maynard

27.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

28.

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

Anatole France

29.

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.

30.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

31.

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

P. B. Medawar

32.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

33.

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

Williamson, Marianne

34.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

35.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

36.

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

Everson, Ray D.

37.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

38.

Such as take lodgings in a head that's to be let unfurnished.

Butler, Samuel

39.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

40.

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

Rohn, Jim

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

44.

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

45.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest