Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

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

Proust, Marcel

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

Einstein, Albert

Many ideas are good for a limited time -- not forever.

Townsend, Robert

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 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

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

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

10.

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

11.

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

Brande, Dorothea

12.

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

Berry, John

13.

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

14.

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

Canetti, Elias

15.

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

Block, Henry

16.

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

17.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

18.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

19.

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

20.

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

Koysis, Ted

21.

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

Eliot, George

22.

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

Rorty, Richard

23.

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

24.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

25.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

26.

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

27.

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

Hector Berlioz

28.

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

Penny, A. Owen

29.

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

Marquis, Don

30.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

31.

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

32.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

33.

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

Harris, Sidney J.

34.

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

Williamson, Marianne

35.

No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.

Sir Frederick G. Banting

36.

Good ideas and innovations must be driven into existence by courageous patience.

Rickover, Hyman G.

37.

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

38.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

39.

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

Saunders, Richard

40.

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

John Cage

41.

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

John Steinbeck

42.

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

Everson, Ray D.

43.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

44.

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

45.

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

Hortense Calisher

46.

Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.

Hugo, Victor

47.

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

48.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

49.

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

50.

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