An aphorism is nothing else but the slightest
QUOTES AND APHORISMS ON IDEAS 1
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 (1900-1973, American inventor)
Eureka! I've got it.
Archimedes (c. 287-12212 BC, Greek mathematician)
The idea is in my head to put it down is nothing.
Milton Avery (1893-1965, American painter)
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 (1936-, American author)
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 scientist, philosopher, literary theorist)
Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.
Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962, French scientist, philosopher, literary theorist)
In every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626, British philosopher, essayist, statesman)
Take the obvious, add a cupful of brains, a generous pinch of imagination, a bucketful of courage and daring, stir well and bring to a boil.
Bernard M. Baruch (1870-1965, American financier)
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.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887, American preacher, orator, writer)
A good idea plus capable men cannot fail; it is better than money in the bank.
John Berry
We like to test things... no matter how good an idea sounds, test it first.
Henry Block (1955-, American businessman, founder of H&R Block)
It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.
John Christian Bovee (1820-1904, American author, lawyer)
The most important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.
Sir William Bragg (1862-1942, Australian physicist, 1915 Nobel Prize in physics)
So long as new ideas are created, sales will continue to reach new highs.
Dorothea Brande (American success writer)
It is useless to send armies against ideas.
George Brandes (1842-1927, Swedish author)
There is no adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact of a new idea.
P. W. Bridgman (1882-1961, American professor, philosopher)
There is no adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact of a new idea.
P. W. Bridgman (1882-1961, American professor, philosopher)
Get your ideas on paper and study them. Do not let them go to waste!
Les Brown (1945-, American speaker, author, trainer, motivator,)
Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born.
Ron Brown (1941-, American Secretary of Commerce)
If you want to get across an idea, wrap it up in a person.
Ralph Bunche
A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.
Samuel Butler (1612-1680, British poet, satirist)
We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.
Mona Caird
Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.
Julie Cameron (American author, "The Artist's Way")
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 (1888-1955, American trainer, author, "How to Win Friends and Influence People")
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.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741-1794, French writer, journalist, playwright)
There are well-dressed foolish ideas, just as there are well-dressed fools.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741-1794, French writer, journalist, playwright)
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you only have one.
Alain Chartier (c.1385-c.1435, French writer)
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-, British science fiction writer)
The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834, British poet, critic, philosopher)
People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first.
David H Comins
Hang ideas! They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy!
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924, Polish-born British novelist)
An idea is the only level which moves the world.
Arthur F. Corey
We enjoy or suffer the consequences of our ideas, our acts or our hopes, and our fears. I cannot affirm God if I fail to affirm man.
Norman Cousins (1915-1990, American editor, humanitarian, author)
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 (1927-, American author, editor, social critic)
Ideas are the roots of creation.
Ernest Dimnet (1866-1954, French clergyman)
He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881, British statesman, Prime Minister)
Bring ideas in and entertain them royally, for one of them may be the king.
Mark Van Doren (1894-1972, American poet, critic)
Neither man nor nation can exist without a sublime idea.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881, Russian novelist)
Great ideas originate in the muscles.
Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931, American inventor, founder of GE)
The value of an idea lies in the using of it.
Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931, American inventor, founder of GE)
To have a great idea, have a lot of them.
Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931, American inventor, founder of GE)
They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955, German-born American physicist)
Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.
George Eliot (1819-1880, British novelist)
Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
Ideas are fatal to caste.
Edward M. Forster (1879-1970, British novelist, essayist)
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.
Michel Foucault (1926-1984, French essayist, philosopher)
Ideas control the world.
James A. Garfield (1831-1881, American President (20th))
An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.'
Jose Ortega Y Gasset (1883-1955, Spanish essayist, philosopher)
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.
Andre Gide (1869-1951, French author)
Ideas not coupled with action never become bigger than the brain cells they occupied.
Arnold H. Glasgow
Every great idea exerts, on first appearing, a tyrannical influence: Hence, the advantages it brings are turned all too soon into disadvantages.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832, German poet, dramatist, novelist)
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.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832, German poet, dramatist, novelist)
Lots of people know a good thing the minute the other fellow sees it first.
Job E. Hodges
Go out and buy yourself a five-cent pencil and a ten-cent notebook and begin to write down some million-dollar ideas for yourself.
Bob Grinde
Ideas move fast when their time comes.
Carolyn Heilbrun (1926-, American author, educator)
All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.
Napoleon Hill (1883-1970, American speaker, author, "Think And Grow Rich")
We have found that any idea or thought that is held in the mind, through repetition, has a tendency to direct the physical body to transform such thought or idea into its material equivalent.
Napoleon Hill (1883-1970, American speaker, author, "Think And Grow Rich")
A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894, American author, wit, poet)
Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894, American author, wit, poet)
Good ideas are a dime a dozen, bad ones are free.
Doug Horton
Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885, French poet, dramatist, novelist)
Great ideas need landing gear as well as wings.
C. O. Jackson
Your ideas are like diamonds without the refining process, they are just a dirty rock, but by cutting away the impurities, they become priceless.
Paul Kearly
There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885, French poet, dramatist, novelist)
Ideas are, in truth, force.
Henry James (1843-1916, American 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 psychologist, professor, author)
An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.
William James (1842-1910, American psychologist, professor, author)
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.
Barry Jones
The public interest is best served by the free exchange of ideas.
John Kane
Ideas lose themselves as quickly as quail, and one must wing them the minute they rise out of the grass, or they are gone.
Thomas F. Kennedy
If you want to kill any idea in the world today, get a committee working on it.
Charles F. Kettering (1876-1958, American engineer, inventor)
It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946, British economist)
The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946, British economist)
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, British economist)
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.
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855, Danish philosopher, writer)
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 wonder whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855, Danish philosopher, writer)
A new idea is like a child. It's easier to conceive than to deliver.
Ted Koysis
When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.
Tuli Kupferberg
Ideas often flash across our minds more complete than we could make them after much labor.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680, French classical writer)
What you need is an idea.
William P. Lear
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.
Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957, British author, painter)
Ideas too are a life and a world.
Georg C. Lichtenberg (1742-1799, German physicist, satirist)
The thinker dies, but his thoughts are beyond the reach of destruction. Men are mortal, but ideas are immortal.
William Lippmann
The ideas dictate everything, you have to be true to that or you're dead.
David Lynch (1946-, American director, screenwriter)
Ideas without action are worthless.
Harvey MacKay (American businessman, speaker, author)
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