Motivational Quotes

Ideas

It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.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

Best Quotes about Ideas

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

Walter Bagehot

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

Jim Hightower

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

Ernst, Morris L.

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

Everything begins with an idea.

Nightingale, Earl

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

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

Horton, Doug

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Moliere

Ideas are the roots of creation.

Dimnet, Ernest

10.

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

11.

Ideas control the world.

Garfield, James A.

12.

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

13.

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

Rorty, Richard

14.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

15.

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

Twain, Mark

16.

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

17.

Some people entertain ideas; others put them to work.

18.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

19.

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

Hortense Calisher

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.

Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.

Hugo, Victor

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

25.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

John Steinbeck

26.

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.

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

30.

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

31.

The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.

P. B. Medawar

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

35.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Forster, Edward M.

36.

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wander whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

37.

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

Simpson, E. L.

38.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

Heilbrun, Carolyn

39.

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

Block, Henry

40.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

41.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

James, Henry

42.

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

John Cage

43.

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

Hodges, Job E.

44.

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

45.

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

Emile Chartier

46.

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

47.

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

Glasgow, Arnold H.

48.

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