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

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

Niblack, Griff

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

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

Keynes, John Maynard

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

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

Twain, Mark

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

An idea is never given to you without you being given the power to make it reality. You must, nevertheless, suffer for it.

Bach, Richard

10.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

11.

It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.

Canetti, Elias

12.

Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy.

Jim Hightower

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.

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

Butler, Samuel

15.

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

Hodges, Job E.

16.

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

17.

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

Rostand, Jean

18.

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

Brande, Dorothea

19.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

20.

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

21.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

22.

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

Hugo, Victor

23.

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.

24.

The ideas dictate everything, you have to be true to that or you're dead.

Lynch, David

25.

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

Block, Henry

26.

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

Judith Brocklehurst

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Sutton, Percy

30.

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

31.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

32.

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

Hortense Calisher

33.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

34.

The simple joy of taking an idea into one's own hands and giving it proper form, that's exciting.

Nelson, George

35.

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

Brown, Les

36.

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

John Steinbeck

37.

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

Harris, Sidney J.

38.

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

Saunders, Richard

39.

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

Emile Chartier

40.

It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.

Gide, Andre

41.

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

42.

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

Picasso, Pablo

43.

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

44.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin