Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Hortense Calisher

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Marquis, Don

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

In Texas, years ago, almost all of the oil came from surface operations. Then someone got the idea that there were greater sources of supply deeper down. A well was drilled five thousand feet deep. The result? A gusher. Too many of us operate on the surface. We never go deep enough to find supernatural resources. The result is, we never operate at our best. More time and investment is involved to go deep but a gusher will pay off.

Montapert, Alfred A.

The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.

Alfred North Whitehead

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.

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

Twain, Mark

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

10.

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

Brande, Dorothea

11.

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

Frost, Robert

12.

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

Jim Hightower

13.

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

Penny, A. Owen

14.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

15.

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

16.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

17.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

18.

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

19.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

20.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds

Gourmont, Remy De

21.

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

22.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

23.

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

24.

It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.

Gide, Andre

25.

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

Walter Bagehot

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Maritain, Jacques

29.

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

Nelson, George

30.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

31.

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

Niblack, Griff

32.

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

33.

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

Rohn, Jim

34.

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

Everson, Ray D.

35.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

36.

It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.

Oech, Roger Von

37.

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

James, William

38.

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

39.

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

Anatole France

40.

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

Eliot, George

41.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

42.

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

43.

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.

44.

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

Block, Henry

45.

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.

Hugo, Victor

46.

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

47.

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

Einstein, Albert

48.

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

49.

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

Rorty, Richard

50.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl