Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Edison, Thomas A.

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

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

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

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

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

John Cage

Ideas are invented only as correctives to the past. Through repeated rectification of this kind one may hope to disengage an idea that is valid.

Bachelard, Gaston

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

James, William

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

10.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

11.

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

12.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

13.

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

Hill, Napoleon

14.

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.

15.

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you only have one.

Chartier, Alain

16.

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

17.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

18.

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

Hortense Calisher

19.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

20.

Ideas... they have the power

Hill, Napoleon

21.

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

22.

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

Anatole France

23.

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

Rickover, Hyman G.

24.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

25.

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

Maritain, Jacques

26.

A new idea is like a child. It's easier to conceive than to deliver.

Koysis, Ted

27.

The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.

William O. Douglas

28.

Man's mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

29.

What you need is an idea.

Lear, William P.

30.

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

31.

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

Everson, Ray D.

32.

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

33.

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

Walter Bagehot

34.

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

35.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

36.

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

37.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

38.

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

Pauling, Linus

39.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

40.

A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

41.

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

42.

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

43.

An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.

Picasso, Pablo

44.

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

45.

Good ideas are a dime a dozen, bad ones are free.

Horton, Doug

46.

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