Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Trotsky, Leon

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Block, Henry

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

Hubbard, Elbert

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

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

Trotsky, Leon

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

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

Butler, Samuel

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

13.

To have a great idea, have a lot of them.

Edison, Thomas A.

14.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

15.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

16.

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

17.

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

John Cage

18.

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

Pound, Ezra

19.

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

20.

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

Berry, John

21.

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

Avery, Milton

22.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

23.

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

Saunders, Richard

24.

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

25.

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

26.

They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities.

Einstein, Albert

27.

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

Hector Berlioz

28.

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.

29.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

30.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

31.

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

Bunche, Ralph

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.

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

Williamson, Marianne

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Victor Hugo

37.

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

38.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

39.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

40.

The difference between people and ideas is... only superficial.

Rorty, Richard

41.

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

42.

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

Everson, Ray D.

43.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

44.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

45.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

46.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

47.

I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

Georgia O'Keeffe

48.

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

Frost, Robert

49.

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

50.

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

Horton, Doug