Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- William O. Douglas

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

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

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

Mason, Ken

Mere words are cheap and plenty enough, but ideas that rouse and set multitudes thinking come as gold for the mines.

Penny, A. Owen

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

Frost, Robert

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

Block, Henry

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

The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.

P. B. Medawar

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

Edison, Thomas A.

10.

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.

11.

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

12.

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

Simpson, E. L.

13.

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

John Cage

14.

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

Hill, Napoleon

15.

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

16.

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

Emile Chartier

17.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

18.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

19.

Man's mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

20.

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

Anatole France

21.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

22.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

23.

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

24.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

25.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

26.

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

27.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

28.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

29.

Man's fear of ideas is probably the greatest dike holding back human knowledge and happiness.

Ernst, Morris L.

30.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

31.

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

John Steinbeck

32.

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

Rorty, Richard

33.

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

34.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

35.

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

Proust, Marcel

36.

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

Hector Berlioz

37.

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

Canetti, Elias

38.

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

Williamson, Marianne

39.

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

Berry, John

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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.

43.

A new idea is like a child. It's easier to conceive than to deliver.

Koysis, Ted

44.

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