Motivating Quotes about Ideas

Ideas can be amazing, absurd, strange, ridiculous, genial, but no one knows until taking action and trying to convert them into reality. Here’s a selection of quotes on the nature of ideas from great minds, some famous some not

“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.”
John Cage

“Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has had 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

“There are no old roads to new directions.”
Advertisement of the Boston Consulting Group

“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.”
Oscar Wilde

“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

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

“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 the right man's brow.”
Ovid

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

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

“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

“Money never starts an idea; it is the idea that starts the money.”
William J. Cameron

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

“Almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are just produced.”
Alfred North Whitehead

“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 that is way great spiritual giants are produced.”
Swami Vivekananda

“Good ideas are common – what’s uncommon are people who’ll work hard enough to bring them about.”
Ashleigh Brilliant

“Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one’s ideas, to take a calculated risk – and to act.”
Andre Malraux

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

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

“Having ideas is like having chessmen moving forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out.”
Dee Hock

If you already have an idea that can bring change to a group of people or to a larger community, do not hesitate to submit to the 2018 Youth Citizen Entrepreneurship Competition. If you want to know how to think like an entrepreneur take our free training courses.

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