Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Sir Frederick G. Banting

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

Butler, Samuel

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

Proust, Marcel

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

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

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

Everson, Ray D.

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

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.

It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

10.

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

John Steinbeck

11.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

12.

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.

13.

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

14.

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

Pound, Ezra

15.

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

16.

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

Hill, Napoleon

17.

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

Walter Bagehot

18.

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

19.

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

Picasso, Pablo

20.

Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.

Bachelard, Gaston

21.

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

Munro, J. Richard

22.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

23.

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

Rohn, Jim

24.

Take the obvious, add a cupful of brains, a generous pinch of imagination, a bucketful of courage and daring, stir well and bring to a boil.

Baruch, Bernard M.

25.

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

26.

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

Twain, Mark

27.

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

Maritain, Jacques

28.

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

29.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

30.

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

31.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

32.

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

33.

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

James, William

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

37.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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.

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

40.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

41.

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

Hortense Calisher

42.

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

Frost, Robert

43.

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

Niblack, Griff

44.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

45.

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.

46.

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

47.

There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man. --

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

48.

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

Hyman Rickover

49.

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

John Cage

50.

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