Ideas - Quotes

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Ideas

A good idea is like a lighted match, easily blown by the cold winds of rigid management. - Richard Kinder

A good idea is like a lighted match, easily blown out by cold winds of rigid management. - Richard Kinder

A man is not clever simply because he has many ideas, just as he is not necessarily a good general because he has many soldiers. - Chamfort

A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one. - Mary Kay Ash

A new idea is a light that illuminate presences which simple had no form before the light fell on them. - Susan Langer

A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on. - Ovid

A person who can create ideas worthy of note is a person who has learned much from others. Konosuke Matsushita

A powerful idea communicates some of its power to the man who contradicts it. - Marcel Proust

A powerful new idea can kick around unused in a company for years, not because its merits are not recognized, but because nobody has assumed the responsibility for converting it from words to action. - Theodore Levitt

A stand can be made against invasion by an army; no stand can be made against invasion by an idea. - Victor Hugo

A young man must let his ideas grow, not be continually rooting them up to see how they are getting on. - William McFee

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

All great ideas are dangerous. - Oscar Wilde

Almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced. - Alfred North Whitehead

Almost everyone who has had an idea that's somewhat revolutionary or wildly successful was first told they're insane. - Larry Page

An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it. - William Bernbach

An idea is like a cold germ: sooner or later someone always catches it. - Stephen King

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

An idea is salvation by imagination. - Frank Lloyd Wright

An idea must not be condemned for being a little shy and incoherent; all new ideas are shy when introduced first among our old ones. We should have patience and see whether the incoherency is likely to wear off or to wear on, in which latter case, the sooner we get rid of them the better. - Samuel Butler

An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea. - Buddha

An idea, like a ghost must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself. - Charles Dickens

An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of a revelation. - William James

Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas. - Marie Curie

But having had your bright, fresh, original idea, the really hard part is turning it into a successful product. That's what takes all the sweat. - Trevor Baylis

Capital isn’t so important in business. Experience isn’t so important. You can get both these things. What is important is ideas. If you have ideas, you have the main asset you need, and there isn’t any limit to what you can do with your business and your life. - Harvey S. Firestone

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one has no time to write down. - Hector Berlioz

Every great idea is on the verge of being stupid. - Michel Gondry

Every idea appears at first as a strange visitor, and when it begins to be realized, it is hardly distinguishable from fantasy. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Every man believes that if he could get capital interested, he could set the world on fire with his ideas. - Edgar Watson Howe

Every really new idea looks crazy at first. - Alfred North Whitehead

Every time a man puts a new idea across he finds ten men who thought of it before he did – but they only thought of it. - Unknown

Everyone sits in the prison of his own ideas; he must burst it open, and that in his youth, and so try to test his ideas on reality. - Albert Einstein

Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference. - Nolan Bushnell

Everything first takes shape in the form of an idea. But an idea itself is worth nothing. An idea, like a machine, must have power applied to it before it can accomplish anything. The men who have won fame and fortune through having an idea are those who devoted every ounce of their strength and every dollar they could muster to putting it into operation. - B. C. Forbes

Few ideas are in themselves practical. it is for want of imagination in applying them that they fail. The creative process does not end with an idea - it only starts with an idea. - John Arnold

Get a good idea and stay with it. Do it, and work at it until it's done right. - Walt Disney

Get your ideas on paper and study them. Do not let them go to waste! - Les Brown

Good ideas do not need to be shouted. They can take care of themselves. - John Daniel Barry

Great ideas are the fuel of progress. - Unknown

Great ideas need landing gears as well as wings. - Adolph Augustus Berle

Great trees are of slow growth; and great ideas have to be before the mind and in the heart a long time before they are sufficiently familiar to have the face of friends. - Reuen Thomas

Human history is, in essence, a history of ideas. - H. G. Wells

History, if it has taught us anything at all, has taught us that the strange ideas we deride today will one day be our celebrated truths. - Dan Brown

I get lots of ideas when the lights go out at night and it gets very quiet. Sometimes they come when I first lie down to sleep; other times I wake up with an idea racing through my mind. But regardless of when an idea comes, I have made it a habit to get out of bed and write the idea down before it disappears into my dreams. You should do the same. - Zig Ziglar

I have found that ideas come when you have a great desire to find them. The mind becomes a kind of watchtower for any incident that might excite the imagination. Music, a sunset, etc, can germinate an idea. - Charlie Chaplin

I have more respect for the fellow with a single idea who gets there than for the fellow with a thousand ideas who does nothing. - Thomas Alva Edison

I have so many ideas; there are so many things that need to be done, so many possibilities, you know; one is terribly excited, but at the same time, you're almost confused, because you don't know where to begin. - Chinua Achebe

Ideas are born in chaos. - Edward Counsel

Ideas are cheap and abundant; what is of value is the effective placement of those ideas into situations that develop into action. - Peter F. Drucker

Ideas are elusive, slippery things. Best to keep a pad of paper and a pencil at your bedside, so you can stab them during the night before they get away. - Earl Nightingale

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

Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas. - Joseph Stalin

Ideas are of themselves extraordinarily valuable, but an idea is just an idea. Almost anyone can think up an idea. The thing that counts is developing it into a practical product. - Henry Ford

Ideas are the factors that lift civilization. They create revolutions. There is more dynamite in an idea than in many bombs. - John H. Vincent

Ideas are the pulses of the soul. - Edward Counsel

Ideas are the root of creation. - Ernest Dimnet

Ideas are to literature what light is to painting. - Paul Bourget

Ideas are useless unless used. The proof of their value is in their implementation. Until then, they are in limbo. - Theodore Levitt

Ideas are, in truth, forces. Infinite too, is the power of personality. A union of the two always makes history. - Charles. W. Eliot

Ideas become powerful only if they appear in the flesh; an idea which does not lead to action by the individual and by groups remains at best a paragraph or a footnote in a book. - Erich Fromm

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

Ideas come from everywhere. New ideas are never the problem; finding the time to act on them – that’s the problem. - Cherie Priest

Ideas come to people who are receptive to them. - Lawrence Block

Ideas first and last: yet it is not till these are formulated and utilized that the devotees of the common sense discern their value and advantages. - Amos Bronson ALcott

Ideas have consequences, and totally erroneous ideas are likely to have destructive consequences. - Steve Allen

Ideas lead revolutions. - Edward Counsel

Ideas lose themselves as quickly as quail, and one must wing them the minute they raise out of the grass - or they are gone. - Thomas Kennedy 

Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ideas mutate, and spread; they change their hosts as much as their hosts change them. - Bernard Beckett

Ideas not coupled with action never become bigger than the brain cells they occupied. - Arnold H. Glasgow

Ideas shape the course of history. - John Maynard Keynes

Ideas should be neutral. But man animates them with his passions and folly. Impure and turned into beliefs, they take on the appearance of reality. The passage from logic is consummated. Thus, are born ideologies, doctrines, and bloody farce. - Emil Cioran

Ideas that transform industries almost never come from inside those industries. - Gary Hamel

Ideas won’t keep; something must be done about them. The value of an idea lies in the using of it. - Unknown

Ideas won’t keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervour, live for it and if need be, die for it. - Alfred North Whitehead

Ideas, I find, come most readily when you are doing something that keeps the mind alert without putting too much strain on it. - Lenox Riley Lohr

Ideas, like young wine, should be put in storage and taken up again only after they have been allowed to ferment and to ripen. - Richard Strauss

Ideas, unlike solid structures, do not perish. They remain immortal, immaterial and everywhere, like all Divine things. Ideas are a golden, savage landscape that we wander unaware, without a map. - Alan Moore

If a man had as many ideas during the day as he does when he has insomnia, he’d make a fortune. - Griff Niblack

If those in charge of our society – politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television – can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves. - Howard Zinn

If you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk. - Raymond Inmon

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas. - George Bernard Shaw

If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you’ll abort it if you do. Be patient and you’ll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait. - Robert Heinlein

If you believe in an idea, you don’t own you, it owns you. - Raymond Chandler

If you're going to deal in the world of ideas, you have to be, to some extent, a salesman. And you're going to sink or rise according to your ability to be a good salesman of ideas. - Barry Diller

In the realm of ideas it is better to let the mind sally forth, even if some precious preconceptions suffer a mauling. - Robert F. Goheen

In the same way as the tree bears the same fruit year after year, but each time new fruit, all lastingly valuable ideas in thinking must always be reborn. - Albert Schweitzer

It is better to entertain an idea than to take it home to live with you for the rest of your life. - Randall Jarrell

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all. - Edward de Bono

It is not at all likely that anyone ever had a totally original idea. He may put together old ideas into a new combination, but the elements which made up the new combination were mostly acquired from other people. Without many borrowed ideas there would be no inventions, new movements or anything else that is classed as new. - Dr. George Grier

It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world. - Aristotle

It is not usually our ideas that make us optimists or pessimists, but it is our optimism or pessimism, of physiological or pathological origin … that makes our ideas. - Miguel de Unamuno

It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on. - Ursula K. le Guin

It is the lone worker who makes the first advance in a subject: the details may be worked out by a team, but the prime idea is due to the enterprise, thought and perception of an individual. - Alexander Fleming

It is impossible for ideas to compete in the marketplace if no forum for their presentation is provided or available. - Thomas Mann

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. - Roger von Oech

It’s not hard to get the ideas when they come. They just come... it’s painful waiting for them. - Oscar Wilde

I've known people who had fantastic ideas, but who couldn't get the idea off the ground because they approached everything weakly. They thought that their ideas would somehow take off by themselves, or that just coming up with an idea was enough. Let me tell you something – it's not enough. It will never be enough. You have to put the idea into action. If you don't have the motivation and the enthusiasm, your great idea will simply sit on top of your desk or inside your head and go nowhere. - Donald Trump

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive. - Napoleon Hill

Lack of money is no obstacle. Lack of an idea is an obstacle. - Ken Hakuta

Like stones rolling down hills, fair ideas reach their objectives despite all obstacles and barriers. It may be possible to speed or hinder them, but impossible to stop them. - Jose Marti

Make it a point to keep a lookout for novel and interesting ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you are currently working on. - Thomas Alva Edison

Man’s fear of ideas is probably the greatest dike holding back human knowledge and happiness. - Morris Leopold Ernst

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Men love their ideas more than their lives. And the more preposterous the idea, the more eager they are to die for it. And to kill for it. - Edward Abbey

My friend, drop all your preconceived and fixed ideas and be neutral. Do you know why this cup is useful? Because it is empty. - Bruce Lee

No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

New ideas can be good and bad, just the same as old ones. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

No idea is so antiquated that it was not once modern; no idea is so modern that it will not someday be antiquated. - Ellen Glasgow

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye. - Winston Churchill

No matter how brilliantly an idea is stated, we will not really be moved unless we have already half thought of it ourselves. - Mignon Mclaughlin

Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own. - Sydney J. Harris

Nobody ever arrives at a very big idea through a conscious, rational thought process. It comes from your unconscious. - David Ogilvy

Not to engage in the pursuit of ideas is to live like ants instead of men. - Mortimer Jerome Adler

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when its the only one we have. - Emile Auguste Chartier 

Once I thought ideas were exceptions not the rule. That is not so. Ideas are so plentiful that they ride on air. You have only to reach out and snatch one. - Rod McKuen 

One who accepts the general ideas of his time gets along smoothest, but he does the least for progress. - Lewis F. Korns

Our ancestors who changed the world did so through new ideas which came to them as they acted. - Raymond Charles Barker

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. - Robert Schuller

Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards – the things we live by and teach our children – are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings. - Walt Disney

Our ideas ... must first acquire a certain strength, before we can proceed efficiently to act upon them. They have their periods of immaturity and maturity. First comes the germ of the idea; then its growth; then an enlargement of that growth; then an expansion of that enlargement; until finally the idea takes its ultimate form as a picture, a book, or a revolution. - Christian Nestell Bovee

Our relationship to reality and to our experience is all based upon the ideas in our mind that we're always trying to live up to. - Andrew Cohen

People don't realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature. - Saul Bellow

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

People must know that their ideas will be listened to and, if they have merit, acted upon. If they do, it is possible to mobilize individual creativity on a very broad scale. - James Champy

Regarded in isolation, an idea may be quite insignificant, and venturesome in the extreme, but it may acquire importance from an idea which follows it; perhaps, in a certain collocation with other ideas, which may seem equally absurd, it may be capable of furnishing a very serviceable link. - Friedrich von Schiller

Reverie is when ideas float in our mind without reflection or regard of the understanding. - John Locke

Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice. - Sydney J. Harris

Speculation and the exploration of ideas beyond what we know with certainty are what lead to progress. - Lisa Randall

Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday. - Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success. - Swami Vivekananda

The ability to express an idea is well nigh as important as the idea itself. - Bernard Baruch

The air is full of ideas. They are knocking you in the head all the time. You only have to know what you want, then forget it and go about your business. Suddenly the idea will come through. It was there all the time. - Henry Ford

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. - Dr. Linus Carl Pauling

The biggest people with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest people with the smallest minds. - John C. Maxwell

The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It’s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them. - Robert Browning

The idea enters the brain from the outside. It rearranges the furniture to make it more to its liking. It finds other Ideas already in residence, and picks fights or forms alliances. The alliances build new structures, to defend themselves against intruders. And then, whenever the opportunity arises, the Idea sends out its shock troops in search of new brains to infect. The successful Idea travels from mind to mind, claiming new territory, mutating as it goes. It's a jungle out there ... many ideas are lost. Only the strongest survive. - Bernard Beckett

The ideas of things precede and lead to their creation. - Christian Nestell Bovee

The man with a new idea is a crank – until the idea succeeds. - Mark Twain

The mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with similar energy. It would not perhaps be too fanciful to say that a new idea is the most quickly acting antigen known to science. It we watch ourselves honestly, we shall often find that we have begun to argue against a new idea even before it has been completely stated. - Wilfred Trotter

The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas. It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong than to be always right by having no ideas at all. - Edward De Bono

The people who oppose your ideas are inevitably those who represent the established order that your ideas will upset. - Anthony D'Angelo

The person who is capable of producing a large number of ideas per unit of time, other things being equal, has a greater chance of having significant ideas. - J. P. Guilford

The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured. Those special people who speak out in such a way as to shake up not only the self-assurance of their enemies, but the complacency of their friends, are precious catalysts for change. - Howard Zinn

The thinker dies, but his thoughts are beyond the reach of destruction. Men are mortal; but ideas are immortal. - Walter Lippmann

The typical eye sees the ten per cent bad of an idea and overlooks the ninety per cent good. - Charles F. Kettering

The whole business starts with ideas, and we’re convinced that ideas come out of an environment of supportive conflict, which is synonymous with appropriate friction. - Michael Eisner

The world moves, and ideas that were once good are not always good. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

The people who oppose your ideas the most are those who represent the establishment that your ideas will upset. - Anthony J. D’Angelo

There is no force so powerful as an idea whose time has come. - Everett Mckinley Dirksen

There is no idea so bad that it cannot be made to look brilliant with the proper application of fonts and colour. - Scott Adams

There's an element of truth in every idea that lasts long enough to be called corny. - Irving Berlin

To develop working ideas efficiently, I try to fail as fast as I can. - Richard P. Feynman

To have ideas is to gather flowers. To think is to weave them into garlands. - Madame Swetchine

Try out your ideas by visualizing them in action. - Dr. David Seabury 

Tyrannies are overthrown by ideas. Armies are defeated by ideas. Nations, and Time itself, are overmatched by ideas. - Henry Ward Beecher

Unless our ideas are questioned, they become part of the furniture of eternity. - Walter Lippmann

We are apt to think that our ideas are the creation of our own wisdom but the truth is that they are the result of the experience through outside contact. -  Konosuke Matsushita

We are far more the creatures of our ideas than of our circumstances. - Christian Nestell Bovee

We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane. - Kurt Vonnegut

We must have the courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. - Maxwell Maltz

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us. - Friedrich Nietzsche

When the idea is new its custodians have fervour, live for it, and, if need be, die for it. - Alfred North Whitehead

Whoso shrinks from ideas ends by having nothing but sensations. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wide acceptance of an idea is not proof of its validity. - Dan Brown

You ask me where I get my ideas. That I cannot tell you with certainty. They come unsummoned, directly, indirectly - I could seize them with my hands - out in the open air, in the woods, while walking, in the silence of the nights, at dawn, excited by moods which are translated by the poet into words, by me into tones that sound and roar and storm about me till I have set them down in notes. - Ludwig van Beethoven

You can talk about an idea forever, but only those with courage and determination will make it materialize for the world to benefit. - Unknown

You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea: you cannot put an idea up against a barracks-square wall and riddle it with bullets: you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell that your slaves could ever build. - Sean O’Casey

You do not destroy an idea by killing people; you replace it with a better one. - Edward Keating

You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it. - Neil Gaiman

You never suffer from a money problem, you always suffer from an idea problem. - Robert Schuller

Your power to convince others of your ideas increase proportionately to the level of your enthusiasm shown during the discussion with them. - Unknown