Motivational Quotes

Ideas

The best ideas are common property.

- Seneca

Best Quotes about Ideas

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.

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

Munro, J. Richard

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

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

Bunche, Ralph

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

Hector Berlioz

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

Keynes, John Maynard

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

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

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Hodges, Job E.

13.

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

Pound, Ezra

14.

A good idea plus capable men cannot fail; it is better than money in the bank.

Berry, John

15.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

16.

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

John Steinbeck

17.

But how shall I get ideas? Keep your wits open! Observe! Observe! Study! Study! But above all, Think! Think! And when a noble image is indelibly impressed upon the mind -- Act!

Marden, Orison Swett

18.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

19.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

20.

It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

21.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

24.

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

Butler, Samuel

25.

Man's mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

26.

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

27.

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

Harris, Sidney J.

28.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

29.

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

30.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

31.

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.

32.

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

Rostand, Jean

33.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

34.

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

35.

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

Mann, Thomas

36.

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

Hortense Calisher

37.

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

Block, Henry

38.

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

39.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

40.

There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who hate them.

Emile Chartier

41.

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

42.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

43.

The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.

Alfred North Whitehead

44.

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

Eliot, George

45.

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

Picasso, Pablo

46.

I'm not impressed with the power of a corporate president. I am impressed with the power of ideas.

Mason, Ken

47.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

48.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

49.

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

50.

Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

Howard Aiken