Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Frost, Robert

Best Quotes about Ideas

You look at any giant corporation, and I mean the biggies, and they all started with a guy with an idea, doing it well.

Robbins, Irvine

Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things.

Dogen

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Rohn, Jim

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

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

Einstein, Albert

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

Ideas won't work unless you do.

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

Hodges, Job E.

10.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

11.

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.

Brown, Ron

12.

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.

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Bridgman, P. W.

17.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

18.

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

19.

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

Everson, Ray D.

20.

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

21.

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

Canetti, Elias

22.

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

Niblack, Griff

23.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

24.

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

25.

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

26.

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

27.

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.

28.

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

29.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

30.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

31.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

32.

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.

33.

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.

34.

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

Hugo, Victor

35.

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

36.

Little words hurt big ideas.

Newton, Howard W.

37.

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

Kettering, Charles F.

38.

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

Brande, Dorothea

39.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

40.

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

41.

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

James, William

42.

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

Nelson, George

43.

The idea is in my head to put it down is nothing.

Avery, Milton

44.

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

Penny, A. Owen

45.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

46.

To have a great idea, have a lot of them.

Edison, Thomas A.

47.

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.

48.

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

Hyman Rickover

49.

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

Simpson, E. L.

50.

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