Quotes about Idea

"Property in ideas is an insoluble contradiction.  [He who complains of "theft" of his idea] complains that something has been stolen which he still possesses, and he wants back something which, if given to him a thousand times, would add nothing to his possession."

An idea is never given to you without you being given the power to make it reality. You must, nevertheless, suffer for it.

Help your true inner identity come true. If there is a single reality in this world. I strongly believe in the idea that it is within us. Do not go too far away to find it. It can really be nearer than you thought.

Paradox is an idea making fun of itself.

War, hatred, and violence all spring from one infernal idea: that one person, race, creed, or culture is better than another.

The human MIND seems to work best in the presence of reality.

The brain that contains the problem
probably also contains the solution.

IF the conditions are right, the huge intelligence of the human being surfaces. IDEAS seem to come from nowhere & sometimes STUN US.

Another problem of fragmentation is that thought divides itself from feeling and from the body.  Thought is said to be the mind; we have the notion that it is something abstract or spiritual or immaterial.  Then there is the body, which is very physical.  And we have emotions, which are perhaps somewhere in between.  The idea is that they are all different.  That is, we think of them as different.  And we experience them as different because we think of them as different.

Any object of thought is both 'more than what we think, and different'.

They took away my money, my family, and my security. Why couldn't they destroy my ideas? We will question them in court tomorrow as we trigger The Revolution of all revolutions!

It's the combination: big idea with a good entrepreneur: there's nothing more powerful. That's just as true [for] education and human rights as it is for hotel or steels.

Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.

If at first an idea isn't absurd, there's no hope for it.

What is the most powerful lever you can imagine? A big idea, but only if it’s in the hands of a truly outstanding entrepreneur. It starts with the person and the idea, and then grows to the institution. All three are intertwined.

For it oft happens that a notion, when it is cloathed with words, seems tedious and operose and hard to be conceived, which yet being striped of that garniture, the ideas shrink into a narrow compass, and are viewed almost by one glance of thought.

Everything solid was first an idea.

I often find that having an idea in my head prevents me from doing something else. Working is therefore a way of getting rid of an idea.

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper [(candle)] at mine, receives light without darkening me.

That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.

Whatever ideas you hear, challenge it. Sometimes people just don't know what they are talking about. No matter how enthuiastic they may be

An idea comes as close to something for nothing as you can get.

Whoever lives for poetry must read everything. How often has the light of a new idea sprung for me from a simple brochure! When one allows himself to be animated by new images, he discovers iridescence in the images of old books. Poetic ages unite in a living memory. The new age awakens the old. The old age comes to live again in the new. Poetry is never as unified as when it diversifies.

How could I recognize, even at the last possible moment, that there was something left to fight for and then walk away when my highest ideal is to fight for the people I love? Especially when I finally felt I could match conviction with courage, intent with action?

Gass once wrote: "Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it." Here is the essence of mankind's creative genius: not the edifices of civilization nor the bang-flash weapons which can end it, but the words which fertilize new concepts like spermatozoa attacking an ovum. It might be argued that the Siamese twin infants of word/idea are the only contribution the human species can, will, or should make to the raveling cosmos.

Someone probably came up with the same idea long before the founder ever did, but he happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Just because your idea is now generating revenue isn’t everlasting proof that you will always be right.

Enthusiasm about a new business idea is not the same as pursuing it.

Not every idea need come affixed with a price tag.

Implementers don’t care about the origins of ideas or the creative process; they are too busy with their own concerns, while idea people don’t often value the necessary financial and business management skills necessary for execution.

It is critical to know when you should give away your ideas and when you should hold them close to the vest.

When you have a great idea, sometimes the best way to make it happen within a large corporation is to convince others that it was their idea – to get them emotionally invested in the project.

One of the best-kept secrets of a sense of humor is to listen, because everyone has a different idea of what’s funny.