Motivational Quotes

Ideas

Think for thyself one good idea, but known to be thine own, is better than a thousand gleaned from fields by others sown.

- Wilson, Alexander

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Saunders, Richard

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

Berry, John

If you have the same ideas as everybody else but have them one week earlier than everyone else then you will be hailed as a visionary. But if you have them five years earlier you will be named a lunatic.

Jones, Barry

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

Hill, Napoleon

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.

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

Brown, Les

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

Keynes, John Maynard

10.

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

11.

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

12.

Our greatest lack is not money for any undertaking, but rather ideas, If the ideas are good, cash will somehow flow to where it is needed.

Schuller, Robert H.

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.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

15.

An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.

16.

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

Trotsky, Leon

17.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

18.

Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.

Bachelard, Gaston

19.

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

Einstein, Albert

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Block, Henry

23.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

24.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

25.

Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience.

Hyman Rickover

26.

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

27.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

28.

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

29.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

30.

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

John Steinbeck

31.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

32.

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

Emile Chartier

33.

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.

34.

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

Rostand, Jean

35.

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

Simpson, E. L.

36.

Think for thyself one good idea, but known to be thine own, is better than a thousand gleaned from fields by others sown.

Wilson, Alexander

37.

It first appeared like a crazy idea. It turned out he had a great idea.

Munro, J. Richard

38.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

39.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

40.

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

Proust, Marcel

41.

A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.

Maritain, Jacques

42.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

43.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

44.

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

45.

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

46.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

47.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

48.

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

49.

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

Butler, Samuel

50.

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

Brande, Dorothea