Motivational Quotes

Ideas

Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.

- Whitehead, Alfred North

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

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

Edison, Thomas A.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.

Whitehead, Alfred North

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

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

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

The most important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.

Bragg, Sir William

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

10.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

11.

So long as new ideas are created, sales will continue to reach new highs.

Brande, Dorothea

12.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

13.

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

14.

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.

Hugo, Victor

15.

Great people talk about ideas. Small people talk about other people.

Gibson, Tobias S.

16.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

17.

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

Emile Chartier

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

21.

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

22.

The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

Pauling, Linus

23.

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

Mann, Thomas

24.

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

25.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

26.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

27.

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

28.

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

Trotsky, Leon

29.

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

30.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

31.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

32.

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

Mason, Ken

33.

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

Walter Bagehot

34.

I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it.

Samuel Goldwyn

35.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

36.

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

Judith Brocklehurst

37.

Not the one who has many ideas, but the one who has a single conviction may become a great person.

Cotvos

38.

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

39.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

40.

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

Chartier, Alain

41.

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

Eliot, George

42.

The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.

William O. Douglas

43.

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

Frost, Robert

44.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

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.

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

Anatole France

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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.

50.

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

Alfred North Whitehead