Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Niblack, Griff

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Walter Bagehot

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

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

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

John Steinbeck

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

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

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

Pauling, Linus

10.

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

Chartier, Alain

11.

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

Butler, Samuel

12.

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

13.

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

14.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

15.

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

Saunders, Richard

16.

Many ideas are good for a limited time -- not forever.

Townsend, Robert

17.

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

William O. Douglas

18.

The ideas of a time are like the clothes of a season: they are as arbitrary, as much imposed by some superior will which is seldom explicit. They are utilitarian and political, the instruments of smooth-running government.

Lewis, Wyndham

19.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

20.

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.

21.

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

Hortense Calisher

22.

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

23.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

24.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

25.

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

Cotvos

26.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

27.

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

28.

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

Bunche, Ralph

29.

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.

30.

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

Hill, Napoleon

31.

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

Canetti, Elias

32.

He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.

Disraeli, Benjamin

33.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

34.

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

35.

An idea is never given to you without you being given the power to make it reality. You must, nevertheless, suffer for it.

Bach, Richard

36.

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

Maritain, Jacques

37.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

42.

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

Eliot, George

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

46.

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

Brown, Les

47.

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

Hugo, Victor

48.

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

Williamson, Marianne

49.

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

Twain, Mark

50.

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