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

A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.

James, William

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

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

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

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

Eliot, George

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

Niblack, Griff

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

10.

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

11.

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

Walter Bagehot

12.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

13.

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

14.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

15.

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

16.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

17.

Ideas lose themselves as quickly as quail, and one must wing them the minute they rise out of the grass, or they are gone.

Kennedy, Thomas F.

18.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

19.

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

Butler, Samuel

20.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

21.

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

Keynes, John Maynard

22.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

23.

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

24.

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

25.

Good ideas are a dime a dozen, bad ones are free.

Horton, Doug

26.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

27.

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

Sutton, Percy

28.

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

29.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

30.

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

Emile Chartier

31.

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

Hodges, Job E.

32.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

33.

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

Hector Berlioz

34.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

35.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

36.

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.

37.

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

Twain, Mark

38.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

39.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

40.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

41.

Ideas not coupled with action never become bigger than the brain cells they occupied.

Glasgow, Arnold H.

42.

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

43.

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

44.

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

Hubbard, Elbert

45.

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

46.

People find ideas a bore because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf.

Pound, Ezra

47.

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

Trotsky, Leon

48.

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

49.

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

Penny, A. Owen

50.

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