Ideas
- As long as your ideas of what's possible are limited by what's actual, no other idea has a chance.--Susan Neiman (Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-up Idealists)
- Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.--Marie Curie
- Believe in something larger than yourself... Get involved in the big ideas of your time.--Barbara Bush
- The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.--Linus Pauling
- Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.--Alfred Whitney Griswold (New York Times, 24 February 1959)
- 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!--Orison Swett Marden
- A child sees everything, looks straight at it, examines it, without any preconceived idea; most people, after they are about eleven or twelve, quite lose this power, they see everything through a few preconceived ideas which hang like a veil between them and the outer world.--Olive Schreiner (The Letters of Olive Schreiner)
- A cold in the head causes less suffering than an idea.--Jules Renard
- A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.--Sir Barnett Cocks (in New Scientist, 1973)
- Congealed thinking is the forerunner of failure...make sure you are always receptive to new ideas.--George Crane
- The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things -- ancient history, 19th century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, hog futures. Because he never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen six minutes later, or six months, or six years. But he has faith that it will happen. --Carl Ally
- A culture that doesn't value its librarians doesn't value ideas and without ideas, well, where are we?--Neil Gaiman (Sandman)
- The ... difference is that of attitude. But that difference determines who gets ideas and who does not. An apathetic or hostile attitude is the enemy of creative thought. Ideas, like people, flourish when they are welcomed and embraced.--Barbara J. Winter (Making a LIving with a Job)
- The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.-- John Maynard Keynes
- Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good you'll have to ram them down people's throats.--Howard Aiken
- Dreams, ideas, and plans not only are an escape, they give me purpose, a reason to hang on.--Steven Callahan
- Every new idea looks crazy at first.--Robert Olson (The Art of Creative Thinking)
- Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary.--Warren Bennis
- Getting an idea should be like sitting down on a pin; it should make you jump up and do something.--E. L. Simpson
- Getting ideas is like shaving: if you don't do it every day, you're a bum.--Alex Kroll
- A great idea is usually original to more than one discoverer. Great ideas come when the world needs them. They surround the world's ignorance and press for admission.--Austin Phelps
- Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.--Eleanor Roosevelt
- Great people talk about great ideas; average people talk about average ideas; small people talk about other poeple.--Anonymous
- The greatest difficulty in the world is not for people to accept new ideas, but to make them forget old ideas.--Tom Peters
- A healthful hunger for a great idea is the beauty and blessedness of life.--Jean Ingelow
- Here's what is exciting about sharing ideas with others: if you share a new idea with ten people, they get to hear it once and you get to hear it ten times.--Jim Rohn
- The history of science has proved that fundamental research is the lifeblood of individual progress and that the ideas that lead to spectacular advances spring from it.--Edward Victor Appleton
- How do you treat ideas?
Treat them TENDERLY--they can be killed quickly.
Treat them GENTLY--they can be bruised in infancy.
Treat them RESPECTFULLY--they could be the most valuable thing that ever came into your life.
Treat them PROTECTIVELY--don't let them get away.
Treat them NUTRITIONALLY--feed them and feed them well.
Treat them ANTISEPTICALLY--don't let them get infected with the germs of negative thoughts.
Treat them RESPONSIBLY--Respond! Act! Do something with them! Decide to decide!--Anonymous
- An idea can only become a reality once it is broken down into organized, actionable elements.--Scott Belsky (Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality)
- An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.--Don Marquis
- An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.--Edward de Bono (Serious Creativity)
- The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.--Elbert Hubbard
- 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
- The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don't like their rules whose would you use?--Dale Carnegie
- Ideas move rapidly when their time comes.--Carolyn Heilbrun (Toward a Recognition of Androgyny)
- Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them.--Alfred North Whitehead
- If you don't execute your ideas, they die.--Roger von Oech
- 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.--G. Bernard Shaw
- If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it.--Charles Kettering
- If you wish to find, you must search. Rarely does a good idea interrupt you.--Jim Rohn ( Jim Rohn's Weekly E-zine - February 11, 2003)
- It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clinches into place.--Francis Harry Compton Crick What Mad Pursuit)
- It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.--Aristotle ("On the Heavens" in Manual of Greek Mathematics by Heath)
- It is useless to close the gates against ideas; they overleap them.--Clemens Wenzel Lothar von Metternich
- In search of ideas I spent yesterday morning in walking about, and went to the stores and bought things in four departments. A wonderful and delightful way of spending time. I think this sort of activity does stimulate creative ideas.--Arnold Bennett (Journals)
- I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.--Emily Bronte
- Let your thoughts meander towards a sea of ideas.--Leo D. Minnigh
- A lofty idea must be had, not of what one is doing, but of what one may some day do. Otherwise there is no point in working on.--Edgar Hilaire Germain Degas (at age 70)
- A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains it original dimension.--Oliver Wendell Holmes
- The more an idea is developed the more concise becomes its expression; the more a tree is pruned, the better is the fruit.--Alfred Bougeant
- Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.--Edward de Bono (Serious Creativity)
- 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
- A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the right person's brow.--Charles Brower
- A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous, and then dismissed as trivial, until finally it becomes what everybody knows.--William James
- 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.--Andrew A. Rooney (Pieces of My Mind)
- New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can’t be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!--Arthur C. Clarke
- New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.--John Locke
- Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.--Emile Chartier
- One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it.--Elizabeth Bowen
- One clear idea is too precious a treasure to lose.--Caroline Gilman
- One of the secrets to success is ideas mixed with inspiration.--Jim Rohn ( Jim Rohn's Weekly E-zine - September 23, 2003)
- Only ideas keep ideas flowing. When we close our minds to what is new, simply because we decide not to bother with it, we close our minds to our responsibility to ourselves - and to others - to keep on growing.--Joan Chittister (The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully)
- The only people in the whole world who can change things area those who can sell ideas.--Lois Wyse (The Rosemary Touch)
- The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.--A. Whitney Griswold
- Opportunity ideas do not lie around waiting to be discovered. Such ideas need to be produced.--Edward de Bono (Serious Creativity)
- People with extraordinary minds, talk about ideas.
People with average minds, talk about events.
People with simple minds, talk about other people.--Anonymous
- A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.--Mark Twain
- The point is that profound but contradictory ideas may exist side by side, if they are constructed from different materials and methods. and have different purposes. Each tells us something important about where we stand in the universe, and it is foolish to insist that they must despise each other.--Neil Postman (The End of Education)
- Serious-minded people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.--Paul Valery
- The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.--Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Sometimes ideas hold us down; they become heavy anchors that hold the bark of identity fixated in shallow, dead water. --John O'Donohue (Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong)
- The teacher is one who makes two ideas grow where only one grew before.--Elbert Hubbard
- Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even one which cannot be justified on any other grounds.--J. Finegan, USC
- There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.--Audre Lorde ("Poetry Is Not a Luxury" Chrysalis)
- ...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 W. Hawking
- There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time as come.--Victor Hugo
- These people who are always briskly doing something and as busy as waltzing mice, they have little, sharp, staccato ideas, such as: "I see where I can make an annual cut of $3.47 in my meat budget." But they have no slow, big ideas.--Brenda Ueland
- To get your ideas across, use small words, big ideas, and short sentences.--John H. Patterson
- To have good ideas, you have to have a lot of ideas. --Linus Pauling
- To stay ahead, you must have your next idea waiting in the wings.--Rosabeth Moss Kanter
- To swear off making mistakes is very easy. All you have to do is swear off having ideas.--Leo Burnett
- Too often new ideas are studied and analyzed until they are suffocated.--William Pollard (The Soul of the Firm)
- Truly every new idea is a violation of some older idea; as the awakening of tomorrow is a violation of today's slumber. As long as man continues to evolve, in other words, to separate himself from chaos, and to express himself in a higher form, he must always shatter something. In shattering, he disobeys: in breaking, he creates.--Jeanne de Vietinghoff (The Understanding of the Good)
- We shouldn't be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.--Noam Chomsky
- Words are often seen hunting for an idea, but ideas are never seen hunting for words.—Henry Wheeler Shaw
- You can borrow a book but you get to keep the ideas.--Unknown
- You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.--John Nuveen
- You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea; you cannot put an idea up against the barrack-square wall and riddle it with bullets; you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell your slaves could ever build.--Sean O'Casey
- 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 ("Where do you get your Ideas? An Essay")
- You have an idea, and then you just put one dumb foot in front of the other and course-correct as you go.--Barry Diller
- Your most brilliant ideas come in a flash, but the flash comes only after a lot of hard work. Nobody gets a big idea when he is not relaxed and nobody gets a big idea when he is relaxed all the time.--Edward Blakeslee
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