Motivational Quotes

Ideas

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

- Caird, Mona

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

If you want to get across an idea, wrap it up in a person.

Bunche, Ralph

It's a pretty good idea to be of good cheer but not all the time. Just at the most unexpected times.

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

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

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

Pound, Ezra

Not the one who has many ideas, but the one who has a single conviction may become a great person.

Cotvos

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

10.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

11.

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

Rohn, Jim

12.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

13.

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.

14.

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.

15.

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

Gibson, Tobias S.

16.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

17.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

18.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

19.

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

Samuel Goldwyn

20.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

21.

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

Harris, Sidney J.

22.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

23.

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

Saunders, Richard

24.

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

Hector Berlioz

25.

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

Emile Chartier

26.

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

27.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

28.

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

John Cage

29.

Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy.

Jim Hightower

30.

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

Simpson, E. L.

31.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

32.

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

33.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

34.

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

35.

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

Hodges, Job E.

36.

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

37.

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

James, William

38.

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

Everson, Ray D.

39.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

40.

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

41.

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

Hortense Calisher

42.

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

Nelson, George

43.

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.

44.

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

45.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

46.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

47.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

48.

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