Motivational Quotes

Ideas

Everything begins with an idea.

- Nightingale, Earl

Best Quotes about Ideas

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

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

Hill, Napoleon

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

Walter Bagehot

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

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

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

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

Hugo, Victor

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

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

Harris, Sidney J.

10.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Keynes, John Maynard

15.

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

16.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

17.

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.

18.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

19.

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

20.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

21.

It first appeared like a crazy idea. It turned out he had a great idea.

Munro, J. Richard

22.

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

23.

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

John Steinbeck

24.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

25.

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

Block, Henry

26.

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

Everson, Ray D.

27.

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

Rohn, Jim

28.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

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.

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

Townsend, Robert

31.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

32.

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

33.

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

Victor Hugo

34.

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

Horton, Doug

35.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

36.

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

37.

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

Marquis, Don

38.

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

Trotsky, Leon

39.

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

Anatole France

40.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

41.

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

Maritain, Jacques

42.

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

Eliot, George

43.

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

Proust, Marcel

44.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Hector Berlioz

48.

Getting an idea should be like sitting down on a pin. It should make you jump up and do something.

Simpson, E. L.

49.

A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

50.

You look at any giant corporation, and I mean the biggies, and they all started with a guy with an idea, doing it well.