Motivational Quotes

Ideas

We are not to make the ideas of contentment and aspiration quarrel, for God made them fast friends. A man may aspire, and yet be quite content until it is time to raise; and both flying and resting are but parts of one contentment. The very fruit of the gospel is aspiration. It is to the heart what spring is to the earth, making every root, and bud, and bough desire to be more. -

- Beecher, Henry Ward

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Ideas won't work unless you do.

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

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

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.

It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.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

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

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

Proust, Marcel

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

John Cage

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.

If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.

Mann, Thomas

12.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

13.

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

Sir Frederick G. Banting

14.

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

15.

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

Jim Hightower

16.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

17.

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

Victor Hugo

18.

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

19.

So many new ideas are at first strange and horrible, though ultimately valuable that a very heavy responsibility rests upon those who would prevent their dissemination.

J. B. S. Haldane

20.

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

Hector Berlioz

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

James, William

24.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

25.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

26.

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

Einstein, Albert

27.

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

Emile Chartier

28.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

29.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Caird, Mona

30.

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

Marquis, Don

31.

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

Simpson, E. L.

32.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

33.

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

34.

The ideas dictate everything, you have to be true to that or you're dead.

Lynch, David

35.

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

36.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

37.

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

38.

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

Cotvos

39.

The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

Pauling, Linus

40.

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

41.

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

42.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

43.

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

Pound, Ezra

44.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

45.

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