Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Harris, Sidney J.

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

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

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

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

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

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

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

10.

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

Twain, Mark

11.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

12.

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

Saunders, Richard

13.

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

Robbins, Irvine

14.

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

Walter Bagehot

15.

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

P. B. Medawar

16.

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

Judith Brocklehurst

17.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

18.

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.

19.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

20.

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

21.

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

Hodges, Job E.

22.

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

23.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

24.

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

25.

A new idea is like a child. It's easier to conceive than to deliver.

Koysis, Ted

26.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

27.

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

Hill, Napoleon

28.

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

Frost, Robert

29.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

30.

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

31.

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

Brown, Les

32.

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wander whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

33.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

34.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

35.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

36.

Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the ocean desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny.

Carl Schurz

37.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

38.

To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.

Rostand, Jean

39.

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

John Cage

40.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

41.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

42.

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

Chartier, Alain

43.

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

Eliot, George

44.

There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than politicians think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas... that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.

Foucault, Michel

45.

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

Avery, Milton

46.

Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience.

Hyman Rickover

47.

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

48.

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

Anatole France

49.

If you pray for only one thing, .let it be for an idea.

Sutton, Percy

50.

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