Ideas quotes
16.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside ideas — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"I sort of recognize it, as opposed to shaping it. Oh, that's a good idea, that's a good line. I wonder where I can use that. And when you get into a rhyme group like 'not,' you got a lot of rhymes, you got a lot of choices. The more you do it, the luckier you get."
"I'm not an academic, but I'm someone who has a great passion for science and wants to convey the idea that science is for everyone."
"The thing I loved, particularly, was the mystery of science and the idea that science doesn't know all the answers, but it is a process of finding out. It's not like science will give you the right answer and science knows everything. I love the mysteries of it."
"You know, this idea of going around the world imposing democracy by growing a middle-class, a trading merchant class that is independent of your faith, is a good notion, but we're all partially different - it's no good imposing systems on people that it doesn't suit."
"The success of any user generated content-related project should be judged in the long term. Try not to use it as a one-off campaign activation idea. Think of it instead as the beginning or continuation of an ongoing dialogue with your consumers."
"the strange ideas we derive today will one day be our celebrated truths"
"I have done it [appointed commissions] regretfully and with the hope that it would be temporary. But after a commission is established you find it always wants to enlarge itself, employ more people, is very busy with Senators and Congressmen to impress upon them the great value of the services of the commission, and even when I talk to people that I appoint to commissions and tell them I would like them to go on to various boards with the idea that they may be abolished, they say they ought to be abolished, but when they have taken their position they very soon seem to change their mind."
"When your focus is social change and not financial change why wouldn't you want to share that openly? Innovation only succeeds when it's shared. If you're a pioneer and you come up with something that can change the world and you turn round and say 'I'm not going to share this idea with anyone' then you only impact the few and not the many."
"Beware of people carrying ideas. Beware of ideas carrying people."
"You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own."
"You force people to stop asking questions, and before you know it they have auctioned off the question mark, or sold it for scrap. No boldness. No good ideas for fixing what's broken in the land. Because if you happen to mention it's broken, you are automatically disqualified."
"The man with but one idea in his head is sure to exaggerate that to top-heaviness, and thus he loses his equilibrium."
"The American Revolution and Declaration of Independence, it has often been argued, were fueled by the most radical of all American political ideas."
"We were giving advice for the single-worst idea to come forward from a group that's been rife with them, it would be this: The idea is this: Let's make the tax code of America better for very rich people; let's give substantial tax relief to the richest people we can find. Forget about the person making $40,000 a year and paying Social Security payroll tax. Forget about all those other people paying income tax; we're here to give tax relief to the richest 2% of America."
"NATO was a wonderful idea. It was formed in 1949. We are as far away from NATO as NATO was when it was done in time from the presidency of Grover Cleveland."
"We must remember that the people of all the States are entitled to all the privileges and immunities of the citizen of the several States. We should bear this in mind, and act in such a way as to say nothing insulting or irritating. I would inculcate this idea, so that we may not, like Pharisees, set ourselves up to be better than other people."
"I could not sleep when I got on the hunt for an idea, until I had caught it. This was a kind of passion with me, and it has stuck with me."
"I wear clothes and sell products and ideas."
"Once a new idea springs into existence, it cannot be unthought. There is a sense of immortality in a new idea."
"Some people are aware of another sort of thinking which... leads to those simple ideas that are obvious only after they have been thought of... the term 'lateral thinking' has been coined to describe this orther sort of thinking; 'vertical thinking' is used to denote the conventional logical process."
