Ideas Proverbs

Sayings about Ideas

Wise men talk about ideas, intellectuals about facts, and the ordinary man talks about what he eats. ~ Mongolian Proverb

Ideas are something that usually comes like fireman- too late. ~ Jewish Proverb

An inflated idea can burst the bubble of your happiness. ~ Myanmar Proverb

The conversation of the wise concerns ideas; that of the intelligent is about ideas; the common folk talk about food. ~ Chinese Proverb

The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out. ~ Chinese Proverb

A vacant mind is open to all suggestions, as a hollow building echoes all sounds. ~ Chinese Proverb

Quotations about Ideas

Our land is not more the recipient of the men of all countries than of their ideas. ~ George Bancroft

My mind contains many good ideas, but it's not always easy to squeeze one out. ~ Ashleigh Brilliant

If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it. ~ Thomas Mann

Ideas corrode the international fences. ~ Martin H. Fischer

He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

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

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

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

The persistence of an all-absorbing idea is terrible. ~ Victor Hugo

A fixed idea ends in madness or heroism. ~ Victor Hugo

New ideas are but gathered fragments from the past. ~ James Lendall Basford

You can't kill ideas with a sword. ~ David Weber

If you want to get across an idea, wrap it up in a person. ~ Ralph Bunche

Men's ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state. ~ Karl Marx

Drawing is putting a line round an idea. ~ Henri Matisse

I am interested in ideas, not merely in visual products. ~ Marcel Duchamp

Words are daughters of earth but ideas are sons of heaven. ~ Samuel Johnson

Ideas are born in chaos. ~ Edward Counsel

Great ideas originate in the muscles. ~ Thomas A. Edison

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

Ideas generate ideas; like a potato, which, cut in pieces, reproduces itself in a multiplied form. ~ Eliza Cook

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

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

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. ~ Victor Hugo

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have. ~ Emile Chartier

Great ideas and great melodies have a lot in common. ~ Bono

Repeat anything often enough and it will start to become you. ~ Tom Hopkins

All great ideas are dangerous. ~ Oscar Wilde

The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Others go to bed with their mistresses; I with my ideas. ~ José Marti

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

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

Our ideas, like pictures, are made up of lights and shadows.~ Joseph Joubert

Men who accomplish great things in the industrial world are the ones who have faith in the money producing power of ideas. ~ Charles Fillmore

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas. ~ Mona Caird

We change ideas like neckties. ~ Emil Cioran

Ideas often flash across our minds more complete than we could make them after much labor. ~ Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld

There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools. ~ Chamfort

Ideas move fast when their time comes. ~ Carolyn Gold Heilbrun

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

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

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come. ~ Victor Hugo

One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it. ~ Elizabeth Bowen

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea. ~ Julie Cameron

It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Bring ideas in and entertain them royally, for one of them may be the king. ~ Mark Van Doren

There is not adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact of a new idea. ~ Percy W. Bridgman

My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living. ~ Anais Nin

So long as new ideas are created, sales will continue to reach new highs. ~ Dorothea Brande

The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas, and throw the bad ones away. ~ Linus Pauling

You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea. ~ Pablo Picasso

Ideas are like beards; men do not have them until they grow up. ~ Voltaire

An idea is, in the end, always stronger than circumstances. ~ Albert Schweitzer

If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it. ~ Albert Einstein

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. ~ Linus Pauling

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

One should conquer the world, not to enthrone a man, but an idea; for ideas exist forever. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

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

It's not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas. ~ Edwin H. Land

Language is the means of getting an idea from my brain into yours without surgery. ~ Mark Amidon

A good idea plus capable men cannot fail; it is better than money in the bank. ~ John Berry

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

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

Every new idea is an impossibility until it is born. ~ Ron Brown

Ideas are like wandering sons. They show up when you least expect them. ~ Bern Williams

Ideas lead revolutions. ~ Edward Counsel

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

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

It is the nature of thought to find its way into action. ~ John Christian Bovee

What we need is hatred. From it our ideas are born. ~ Jean Genet

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Good ideas often take wings and fly beyond our reach, while bad ones will cling to us like barnacles to a vessel. ~ James Lendall Basford

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

Only the wise possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Night time is really the best time to work. All the ideas are there to be yours because everyone else is asleep. ~ Catherine O'Hara

Ideas can no more flow backward than can a river. ~ Victor Hugo

A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences. ~ Jacques Maritain

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

An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied. ~ Arnold H. Glasgow

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

People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first. ~ David H Comins

The material universe exists only in the mind. ~ Jonathan Edwards

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

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

An idea is the only level which moves the world. ~ Arthur F. Corey

Neither man nor nation can exist without a sublime idea. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

Great ideas travel slowly, and for a time noiselessly, as the gods whose feet were shod with wool. ~ James Abram Garfield

You have to hatch ideas -- and then hitch them. ~ Ray D. Everson

It is useless to send armies against ideas. ~ George Brandes

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

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

Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Ideas are pitiless. ~ Alphonse de Lamartine

The value of an idea lies in the using of it. ~ Thomas A. Edison

Ideas, as distinguished from events, are never unprecedented. ~ Hannah Arendt

A man who ain't got ideas of his own should be mighty careful who he borrows 'em from. ~ Ken Alstad

It doesn't matter how new an idea is; what matters is how new it becomes. ~ Elias Canetti

The only new ideas that are not subject to our skepticism or suspicion are our own. ~ Cullen Hightower

A soul preoccupied with great ideas best performs small duties. ~ Harriet Martineau

Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought. ~ Napoleon Hill

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

Money never starts an idea. It is always the idea that starts the money. ~ Owen Laughlin

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

There is no adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact of a new idea. ~ P. W. Bridgman

A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.~ Samuel Butler

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy to be called an idea at all. ~ Elbert Hubbard

Labor gives birth to ideas. ~ Jim Rohn

An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe it. ~ Don Marquis

There's no such thing as good ideas and bad ideas. There are only your own ideas and other people's. If you want someone to like your idea, tell him he said it first last week and you just remembered it. ~ Scott Adams

It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.~ George Santayana

Events are only the shells of ideas; and often it is the fluent thought of ages that is crystallized in a moment by the stroke of a pen or the point of a bayonet. ~ Edwin Hubbell Chapin

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

Man is ready to die for an idea, provided that idea is not quite clear to him. ~ Paul Eldridge

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

Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up because they're looking for ideas. ~ Paula Poundstone

Ideas are the root of creation. ~ Ernest Dimnet

Ideas are the pulses of the soul. ~ Edward Counsel

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

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

To have a great idea, have a lot of them. ~ Thomas A. Edison

Ideas for Action: Relevant Theory for Radical Change. ~ Book preview