Motivational Quotes

Ideas

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

- Mann, Thomas

Best Quotes about Ideas

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

An idea discovered is much better possessed.

Young

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

Frost, Robert

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

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.

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.

Kupferberg, Tuli

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

Proust, Marcel

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

Block, Henry

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

10.

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

11.

The best ideas are common property.

Seneca

12.

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

13.

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

14.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

15.

It first appeared like a crazy idea. It turned out he had a great idea.

Munro, J. Richard

16.

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

Pound, Ezra

17.

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.

18.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

19.

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

Hodges, Job E.

20.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

Cameron, Julie

21.

Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.

Bachelard, Gaston

22.

A good idea plus capable men cannot fail; it is better than money in the bank.

Berry, John

23.

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

Picasso, Pablo

24.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

25.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

26.

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

Hyman Rickover

27.

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.

28.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Edison, Thomas A.

29.

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

30.

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

Marquis, Don

31.

Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

Howard Aiken

32.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

33.

Never hesitate to steal a good idea.

Neuharth, Al

34.

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

Einstein, Albert

35.

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

36.

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

Ernst, Morris L.

37.

It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

Keynes, John Maynard

38.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

39.

Ideas won't work unless you do.

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Rohn, Jim

43.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

Corey, Arthur F.

44.

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

Canetti, Elias

45.

To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.

Rostand, Jean

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

50.

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

Cotvos