Motivational Quotes

Ideas

Long is the road from conception to completion.

- Moliere

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Anatole France

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

Rorty, Richard

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

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

James, William

It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.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

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

Picasso, Pablo

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

Nelson, George

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

Everson, Ray D.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

10.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

11.

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

Williamson, Marianne

12.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

13.

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.

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Hector Berlioz

17.

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

Twain, Mark

18.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

19.

A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it.

Proust, Marcel

20.

The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.

William O. Douglas

21.

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

22.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

23.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

24.

Lots of people know a good thing the minute the other fellow sees it first.

Hodges, Job E.

25.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Trotsky, Leon

29.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

30.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

31.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

32.

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

33.

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

Lynch, David

34.

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

35.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

36.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

37.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

38.

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

39.

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

Maritain, Jacques

40.

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

41.

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

Walter Bagehot

42.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

43.

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

Hugo, Victor

44.

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

Penny, A. Owen

45.

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

Bunche, Ralph

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

49.

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

Block, Henry

50.

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

Niblack, Griff