The greatest difficulty in the world is not for people to accept new ideas, but to make them forget old ideas.
—Tom Peters (b.1942) American Management Consultant, Author
People find ideas a bore because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
A half-baked idea is okay as long as it’s in the oven.
—Unknown
Ideas are like wandering sons. They show up when you least expect them.
—Bert Williams
If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
Ideas won’t work unless you do.
—Unknown
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.
—Midge Decter (b.1927) American Journalist, Activist, Author
A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.
—William James (1842–1910) American Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician
Mr. Kremlin himself was distinguished for ignorance, for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.
—John Nuveen
The only force that can overcome an idea and a faith is another and better idea and faith, positively and fearlessly upheld.
—Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American Journalist, Radio Personality
First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.
—Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American Author, Journalist, Attorney, Lecturer
Acting on a good idea is better than just having a good idea.
—Robert Half
An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of a revelation.
—William James (1842–1910) American Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician
There is no prescribed route to follow to arrive at a new idea. You have to make the intuitive leap. But the difference is that once you’ve made the intuitive leap you have to justify it by filling in the intermediate steps. N my case, it often happens that I have an idea, but then I try to fill in the intermediate steps and find that they don’t work, so I have to give it up.
—Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) English Theoretical Physicist, Cosmologist, Academic
The measure of greatness in a scientific idea is the extent to which it stimulates thought and opens up new lines of research.
—Paul Dirac (1902–84) English Theoretical Physicist
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 (1921–89) American Motivational Speaker, Author
If you want to get across an idea, wrap it up in a person.
—Ralph Bunche (1903–71) American Political Scientist, Diplomat
Ideas move rapidly when their time comes.
—Carolyn Gold Heilbrun (1926–2003) American Author, Literary Critic
If a man loves the labor of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work – the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside – the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don’t show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within – that you don’t feel until it’s too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again. The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick – the second kind happens almost without your knowing it but is realized suddenly indeed. Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation – the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American Novelist
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
To ask at what time a man has first any ideas is to ask when he begins to perceive; having ideas and perception being the same thing.
—John Locke (1632–1704) English Philosopher, Physician
Man’s mind stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn’t like it.
—Samuel Goldwyn (1879–1974) Polish-born American Film Producer, Businessperson
To have good ideas, you have to have a lot of ideas.
—Linus Pauling (1901–94) American Scientist, Peace Activist
The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.
—John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) English Economist
Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one’s better abilities or ideas but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk—and act.
—Maxwell Maltz (1899–1975) American Surgeon, Motivational Writer
An idea is worth nothing if it has no champion.
—Unknown
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.
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English Mathematician, Philosopher
New ideas are one of the most overrated concepts of our time. Most of the important ideas that we live with aren’t new at all.
—Andy Rooney (b.1919) American Writer, Humorist, TV Personality
An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied.
—Arnold Glasow (1905–98) American Businessman
Believe in something larger than yourself… Get involved in the big ideas of your time.
—Barbara Bush (1925–2018) American First Lady
He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
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.
—Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British Scientist, Science-fiction Writer
They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
The value of an idea lies in the using of it.
—Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American Inventor, Scientist, Entrepreneur
Great people talk about great ideas; average people talk about average ideas; small people talk about other poeple.
—Anonymous
An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.
—Buddhist Teaching
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.
—Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French Philosopher, Psychoanalyst, Poet
The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Russian Marxist Revolutionary
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 rise; 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.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
As long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
An idea is never given to you without you being given the power to make it reality. You must, nevertheless, suffer for it.
—Richard Bach (b.1936) American Novelist, Aviator
When young men are beginning life, the most important period, it is often said, is that in which their habits are formed.—That is a very important period.—But the period in which the ideas of the young are formed and adopted is more important still.—For the ideal with which you go forth to measure things determines the nature, so far as you are concerned, of everything you meet.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.
—Anais Nin (1903–77) French-American Essayist
Such as take lodgings in a head that’s to be let unfurnished.
—Samuel Butler
The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.
—Brennan Manning (1934–2013) American Theologian, Author