Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.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

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

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

Picasso, Pablo

Getting an idea should be like sitting down on a pin. It should make you jump up and do something.

Simpson, E. L.

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

Avery, Milton

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

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

Brown, Les

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

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

10.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

11.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

12.

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

13.

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

14.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

15.

A man is not necessarily intelligent because he has plenty of ideas, any more than he is a good general because he has plenty of soldiers.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

16.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

17.

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

Einstein, Albert

18.

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

19.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

20.

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

21.

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

Lynch, David

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Nelson, George

25.

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

Canetti, Elias

26.

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

John Cage

27.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

28.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

29.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

30.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

31.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

32.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

33.

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

Harris, Sidney J.

34.

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

Everson, Ray D.

35.

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

Berry, John

36.

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

Rohn, Jim

37.

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

38.

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

Chartier, Alain

39.

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

Howard Aiken

40.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

41.

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.

42.

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

Hortense Calisher

43.

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

44.

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

Hector Berlioz

45.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

46.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

47.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

48.

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

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.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron