Big Ideas Quotes

The productiveness of any meeting depends on the level of thought given to the agenda in advance, and you should never leave a meeting without writing a follow-up list with each item assigned to one person. And go outside. All the big ideas are on the outside. You'll never have a creative idea at your desk. ~ Barbara Corcoran

The secret to good writing is to use small words for big ideas, not to use big words for small ideas. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy

There was much that was endearing in this strangely Russian search for absolutes - such as the passion for big ideas that gave the literature of nineteenth-century Russia its unique character and power - and yet the underside of this idealism was a badgering didacticism, a moral dogmatism and intolerance, which in its own way was just as harmful as the censorship it opposed. ~ Orlando Figes

People, we're always reaching for these big things... you know? Big ideas... big moments... big lives. And all the while the little things we're ignoring are undoing us. ~ Joshua Dysart

There is no accountability today ... no willingness to focus on big ideas. ~ Michael Bloomberg

It's very useful to have a good grasp of all the big ideas in hard and soft science. A, it gives perspective. B, it gives a way for you to organize and file away experience in your head, so to speak. ~ Charlie Munger

John Bransford, a gifted education researcher, has spent many years studying what separates novice teachers from expert teachers. One of many things he noticed is the way the experts organize information. "[Experts'] knowledge is not simply a list of facts and formulas that are relevant to their domain; instead, their knowledge is organized around core concepts or 'big ideas' that guide their thinking about their domains," he cowrote in How People Learn. ~ John Medina

Big ideas we tend to like are the ones that seem impossible or crazy. ~ Bill Maris

Get the big idea and all else follows. ~ B. J. Palmer

In current times when everyone tells us to work smart, they are right. Be idealist, bring grand big ideas, innovate and launch thrilling initiatives but then, work hard. Work real hard because all that has ever been achieved in this world is by true dedication, persistence and consistent hard work". ~ Khalida Brohi

The American people ... want change. They want big ideas, big reform. ~ Rahm Emanuel

My novels tend to come about from a fusion of two big ideas, creating a critical mass that then fissions, throwing off hundreds of other particles, riffs, tropes and characters. ~ Will Self

YouTube began as a failed video-dating site. Twitter was a failed music service. In each case, the founders continued to try new concepts when their big ideas failed. They often worked around the clock to try to overcome their failure before all their capital was spent. Speed to fail gives a startup more runway to pivot and ultimately succeed. ~ Jay Samit

The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas - fascism, communism, the atomic bomb. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

I always played around with writing songs, but when you're spending a lot of time in bars, you have a lot of big ideas, but you don't do much with them. ~ Dave Gahan

I'd like to be remembered, as a copywriter who had some big ideas. That's what the advertising business is all about. Big ideas ~ David Ogilvy

You will never win fame and fortune unless you invent big ideas. ~ David Ogilvy

People laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas, you have to use big words to express them, haven't you? ~ L.M. Montgomery

Paul Levinson has outdone himself: The Plot to Save Socrates is a philosophically rich gem full of big ideas and wonderful time-travel tricks. ~ Robert J. Sawyer

When you hang out with whiners, pessimists, tweakers, bleakers, freakers-outers, and life-is-so-unfairers, it's an uphill climb to keep yourself in a positive headspace. Stay away from people who see limitless possibility as the reality. Surround yourself with people who act on their big ideas, who take action on making positive change in the world and who see nothing as out of their reach. ~ Jen Sincero

We built 'Jade Empire,' then we built 'Mass Effect,' then we built 'Dragon Age.' With those last two, when you're dealing with two big ideas that are on their third iterations, you develop some strategies for managing your lore, or you drown! ~ Marc Laidlaw

It's one of the Archchancellor's Big Ideas. He says that if the faculty gets to know one another better, they'll be a happier, more efficient team.'
'But they do know one another! They've known one another for ages! That's why they don't like one another very much! They won't stand for being turned into a happy and efficent team! ~ Terry Pratchett

I write from my knowledge not my lack, from my strength not my weakness. I am not interested if anyone knows whether or not I am familiar with big words, I am interested in trying to render big ideas in a simple way. I am interested in being understood not admired. ~ Lucille Clifton

For who brooded over the meaninglessness of life anymore? Teenagers. They were the only ones who were preoccupied with existential issues, and as a result there was something puerile and immature about them, and hence it was doubly impossible for adults with their sense of propriety intact to deal with them. However, this is not so strange for we never feel more strongly and passionately about life than in our teenage years, when we step into the world for the first time, as it were, and all our feelings are new feelings. So there they are, with their big ideas on small orbits, looking this way and that for an opportunity to launch them, as the pressure builds. And who is it they light upon sooner or later but Uncle Dostoevsky. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

Big ideas start as weird ideas. ~ Patri Friedman

Openness explains the ability to innovate and come up with big ideas because you're open to them, and fluid intelligence explains the ability to go and execute. ~ Adeo Ressi

If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science fiction writers are its court jesters. We are Wise Fools who can leap, caper, utter prophecies, and scratch ourselves in public. We can play with Big Ideas because the garish motley of our pulp origins make us seem harmless. ~ Bruce Sterling

I really like Kickstarter because you don't have to be a Medici to fund the arts and sciences or to get behind a big idea or a person that sparks your imagination. It's a type of microfunding directed toward creators. ~ Lisa Gansky

The job of the leader is to get the big ideas right. ~ David Petraeus

I welcome and seek your ideas, but do not bring me small ideas; bring me big ideas to match our future. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger

We have big ideas. I just think that's part of how you campaign. You talk to the American people about big things. ~ Newt Gingrich

I hate America. I hate this country. It's just big ideas, and stories, and people dying, and people like you. The white cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word 'free' to a note so high nobody can reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on earth sounds less like freedom to me. You come to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean. I live in America, that's hard enough, I don't have to love it. You do that. Everybody's got to love something. ~ Tony Kushner

Leaders must pick causes they won't abandon easily, remain committed despite setbacks, and communicate their big ideas over and over again in every encounter. ~ Rosabeth Moss Kanter

The real leaders of tomorrow are already working on the next big idea, the one that will drive growth into future. They're already far beyond the ideas that created today's results. ~ Roger Enrico

Don't bother getting out of bed.
The world is crowded enough
without you and your big ideas. ~ Pamela August Russell

What I notice about people who are gifted in filmmaking is that they're great thinkers. They engage with big ideas and they engage with people. ~ Ben Whishaw

It was Friday, July 24, 1992, when I stepped on the train. Every year I think of it. I see it as my real birthday: the birth of me as a person, making decisions about my life on my own. I was not running away from Islam, or to democracy. I didn't have any big ideas then. I was just a young girl and wanted some way to be me; so I bolted into the unknown. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

People that love quotes are those short on time, but long on big ideas. ~ Bruce Edwin

You may live in an unknown small village, but if you have big ideas, the world will come and find you! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

I get a lot of big ideas, and occasionally I actually come up with one myself. ~ Bauvard

Believe Big. The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief. Think little goals and expect little achievements. ~ David J. Schwartz

Not romantic," she disagreed. "To me it would be romantic if Antony properly fell on his sword and kicked the bucket and Cleopatra escaped and lived a lovely life sailing along the Nile without him and his big ideas ruining her kingdom. ~ Jack Gantos

It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea. ~ David Ogilvy

The big ideas always come in flashes. I don't really craft stories that much. I genuinely don't know where these people come from, and I've often wondered if writing is just a socially acceptable form of madness. ~ Taiye Selasi

To be sure, the Fair Tax is a big idea. However, I believe America was built on big ideas, and I was elected to Congress to fight for those big ideas, not nibble around the edges of a broken and destructive system. The FairTax would be a real stimulus for economic growth, and it wouldn't cost taxpayers a dime. ~ Rob Woodall

I would like to have insights into things like government, all those big ideas that you brought up that I simply don't have ideas about. I would like to be able to since so many people discuss them, but I don't want to work at them. I don't think my ambition is that strong in that direction. ~ Jasper Johns

For students to understand what the future of journalism is going to be, they're going to have to invent it. It's a big idea. We don't know what journalism is going to look like in the next three years, let alone the next 10 years. ~ Steve Blank

Nobody ever arrives at a very big idea through a conscious, rational thought process. It comes from your unconscious. ~ David Ogilvy

Big ideas developed in a vacuum are doomed from the start. Feedback is the essential tool for building and growing a successful company. ~ Jay Samit

Believe in something larger than yourself ... get involved in the big ideas of your time. ~ Barbara Bush

But that initial, comet-blazing-across-the-sky, Big Idea is only the beginning. Each book is composed of a mosaic of thousands of little ideas, ideas that invariably come to me at two in the morning when my alarm is set for seven. ~ Lauren Willig

Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science, and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process. You can help this process by going for a long walk, or taking a hot bath, or drinking half a pint of claret. Suddenly, if the telephone line from your unconscious is open, a big idea wells up within you. ~ David Ogilvy

Big data will never give you big ideas ... Big data doesn't facilitate big leaps of the imagination. It will never conjure up a PC revolution or any kind of paradigm shift. And while it might tell you what to aim for, it can't tell you how to get there ~ Margaret Heffernan

Big minds have big ideas. Small minds use big ideas to justify bad ideas. ~ Walter Darby Bannard

I can't disagree. I laugh weakly, walking him to the door. As he leaves I'm wondering and not wondering what happens in the world of Tim Price, which is really the world of most of us: big ideas, guy stuff, boy meets the world, boy gets it. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Korie: Phil and Willie are so much alike. We went to a marriage seminar at our church one time, and Phil and Kay and Jase and Missy were there as well. Each of the couples took a personality test to see if their personalities were compatible. We all laughed because Phil and Willie scored high in the characteristics for having a dominant personality. They were almost identical in a lot of areas, but somewhat different in that Willie was high in the social category as well. I think Willie got that part of his personality from his mother.
It's funny because people look at the Robertsons and think Jase and Phil are just alike, and they are certainly similar in their love for ducks. But when we took the personality test, we saw that Jase's personality is much more like his mother's. So I guess it makes sense that Phil and Jase get along so well in the duck blind. They made a good team, just like Phil and Kay do at home. Kay has always said that Willie is a lot like Phil and even calls him "Phil Jr." at times. While I wouldn't go that far, I definitely saw the similarities. They both have strong, charismatic personalities. They are both big-picture guys with big ideas and deep beliefs. Whatever either of them is going in life, he does it all the way, and they are both very opinionated, which can sometimes be a challenge. Phil and Willie haven't always been as close as they are now. As they grew, they recognized the attributes they have in common and learned to value one anothe ~ Willie Robertson

For some odd reason, I had an early and extreme multidisciplinary cast of mind. I couldn't stand reaching for a small idea in my own discipline when there was a big idea right over the fence in somebody else's discipline. So I just grabbed in all directions for the big ideas that would really work. ~ Charlie Munger

Most of us have one BIG IDEA at some point in our lives. That Eureka! moment. It comes to us all in different ways, often by chance of serendipity. ~ Peter James

The only big ideas I've ever had came from daydreaming, but modern life keeps people from daydreaming. Every moment of the day your mind is being occupied, controlled by someone else - at school, at work, watching television. Getting away from all that is really important. You need to just kick back in a chair and let your mind daydream. ~ Paul MacCready

Big thoughts are fun to romanticize, but it's many small insights coming together that bring big ideas into the world. ~ Scott Berkun

I am not going to make promises I can't keep. I am not going to talk about big ideas like single-payer and then not level with people about how much it will cost. ~ Hillary Clinton

I want big ideas to have aesthetic relevance. I want to tickle people's intellectual sensibilities and instill a sense of wonder. ~ Jason Silva

When we know why we're here as individuals and leaders, when our people know why they're here, a sense of purpose carries us forward, and we can do what needs to be done. People want to work on big ideas that matter to them and make a difference. When they do, they find gold. ~ Howard Behar

For me, life should be a processes of thought, not merely about big ideas or great ideas, but also about a small and simple things. ~ Titon Rahmawan

My dad, who looks pretty great for sixty-four, is fond of saying, "You just can't fucking imagine, Lena." He can see the big event in the distance (his belief in robotics not withstanding) and says things like "Bring it on. At this point, I'm fucking curious." I get it: I know nothing. But I also hope that future me will be proud of present me for trying to wrap my head around the big ideas and also for trying to make you feel like we're all in this together. ~ Lena Dunham

I want to build a Big Labor party. A party of big ideas. A party which is deeply connected to the community. A party which reflects our diverse nation. ~ Bill Shorten

Small ideas that turn into big ideas - that really inspires me. ~ Wiz Khalifa

I am a joyful conservative, unafraid to articulate big ideas with an optimistic smile. ~ Kevin Cramer

Little girls with big ideas are much scarier than monsters. ~ Clementine Von Radics

Every kid thinks they have something special about themselves. Every adult thinks they have a big idea at some point in their life. Rather than pursue every thing they possibly can to prepare themselves to enable their idea or special talent, they tend to wing it and make excuses. ~ Mark Cuban

You're also looking at a global warming solution here in Europe: smaller vehicles, more energy efficient, many which use diesel fuel which is more efficient. And the price of gas here is $6 a gallon to discourage guzzling. A lot of big ideas and innovations coming out of Europe. ~ Chris Cuomo

I've never had any big ideas about being the solo. ~ Ringo Starr

More than a building that houses books and data, the library has always been a window to a larger world
a place where we've always come to discover big ideas and profound concepts that help move the American story forward ...
Libraries remind us that truth isn't about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information. Because even as we're the most religious of people, America's innovative genius has always been preserved because we also have a deep faith in facts.
And so the moment we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold into a library, we've changed their lives forever, and for the better. This is an enormous force for good. ~ Barack Obama

What exactly was Jesus' take on violent capitalism? I also have some big ideas for changing the way we think about literary morals as they pertain to legislation. Rather than suffer another attempt by the religious right to base our legalese upon the Bible, I would vote that we found it squarely upon the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien. The citizens of Middle Earth had much more tolerant policies in their governing bodies. For example, Elrond was chosen to lead the elves at Rivendell not only despite his androgynous nature but most likely because of the magical leadership inherent in a well-appointed bisexual elf wizard. That's the person you want picking shit out for your community. That's the guy you want in charge. David Bowie or a Mormon? Not a difficult equation. ~ Nick Offerman

All the big ideas for getting us onto a lower carbon trajectory involve a lot of people doing a lot of work, and that's been missing from the conversation. This is a great time to go to the next step and ask, well, who's going to do the work? Who's going to invest in the new technologies? What are ways to get communities wealth, improved health, and expanded job opportunities out of this improved transition? ~ Van Jones

I love thinking, I love coming up with great ideas. I just get excited. Sometimes if I get a big idea, I'm just like a kid, like I've found a new toy. ~ Dolly Parton

In really good companies, you have to lead. You have to come up with big ideas and express them forcefully. I have always been encouraged
or sometimes forced
to confront the very natural fear of being wrong. I was constantly pushed to find out what I really thought and then to speak up. Over time, I came to see that waiting to discover which way the wind was blowing is an excellent way to learn how to be a follower. ~ Roger Enrico

To finish first you have to first finish. Don't get in a position where you go back to go. What's interesting is that some guy whose grandfather was a lawyer and a judge-hurriedly going to Harvard Law with a wave of veterans-I was willing to go into so many different businesses. I was constantly going right into the other fellow's business and doing better than the other fellow did. The reason it was possible? Self-education- developing mental discipline, big ideas that really work. ~ Charlie Munger

It's hard to feel smart when you're always forgetting things, but Mama Shannon says that's how you can tell a smart person. They're too busy thinking about Big Ideas to worry about little details like tying their shoes or remembering their homework" -Fella ~ Sarah Dooley

When you're a kid, you have these big dreams and these big dreams to make a change, or maybe you feel like you can't make a difference ~ AnnaSophia Robb

Money is just one of the forces that blind us to information and issues which we could pay attention to - but don't. It exacerbates and often rewards all the other drivers of willful blindness; our preference for the familiar, our love for individuals and for big ideas, a love of busyness and our dislike of conflict and change, the human instinct to obey and conform and our skill at displacing and diffusing responsibility. All of these operate and collaborate with varying intensities at different moments in our lives. The common denominator is that they all make us protect our sense of self-worth, reducing dissonance and conferring a sense of security, however illusory. In some ways, they all act like money; making us feel good at first, with consequences we don't see. We wouldn't be so blind if our blindness didn't deliver rewards; the benefit of comfort and ease. ~ Margaret Heffernan

Hello there," he said to me. "My name is Buddy Ray. What's yours?" He had a faint lisp. I swallowed. "Robert Johnson." Buddy Ray's smile would make small children flee to their mamas. "Nice to meet you, Robert." Buddy Ray - I didn't know if that was a double first name or a first and last name - looked me over as though I were a bite-size snack. Something was off with this guy - you could just see it. He kept licking his lips. I risked a glance back at the big bouncer. Even he looked jittery in Buddy Ray's presence. As Buddy Ray approached, a pungent stench of cheap cologne failing to mask foul body odor wafted off him, the foul smell taking the lead like a Doberman he was walking. Buddy Ray stopped directly in front of me, maybe six inches away. I held my breath and stood my ground. I, too, had a foot on him. The bouncer took another step backward. Buddy ~ Harlan Coben

It wouldn't be bad to have the Secret Service keeping an eye on my teenage daughter. I personally am not troubled by the fact that there would be a couple of big guys with earpieces beside her, just in case. ~ Marco Rubio

Sometimes I think my head is so big because it is so full of dreams ~ R.J. Palacio

One thing I'm a big fan of is the theater of the absurd. That's what I come from, that's what I love to do more than anything. What I love about absurdity is the words "comedy" and "drama" get thrown out the window and it's just life, which is absurd. ~ Michael Shannon

We may have to learn to live with cancer rather than die of it. It means a big change in our mindset and how we do research. We haven't quite reached there yet. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

The idea that I [should] trust my eyes more than the stats, I don't buy that because I've seen magicians pull rabbits out of hats and I know that the rabbit's not in there. ~ Billy Beane

We will only grow as big as we dream that's why we must dream big. ~ Gabrielle Williams

The political brain is shaped like a peanut, only not as big. ~ Jarod Kintz

Always keep a big bottle of booze at your side. If a bird starts talking nonsense to you in the middle of the night pour yourself a stiff drink. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

I am becoming aware of the truth that people change people as much as ideas change people.The power of personality is strong ... often personality is greater than the idea. ~ Billy Graham

I like to come up with the melodies, and I have a lot of ideas as far as structure goes. ~ Steven Tyler

Religious ideas, supposedly private matters between man and god, are in practice always political ideas. ~ Christopher Hitchens

When we understand that we are a human race, what affects you affects me, what affects her affects you and so on and so on, then we'll look at this thing [HIV/AIDS] for what it really is. It's a disease that's out to kill all of us. What will make it continue is our prejudices, our ideas about it, and the fact that we don't look at ourselves as one giant community. ~ Queen Latifah

I carry a small spiral notebook with me at all times and have been doing this for many years. There's a shoe box in my closet filled with these notebooks, each riddled with notes and impressions, ideas, schemes, and soup recipes. ~ Patrick DeWitt

I hate my Visa card but have to use it for diesel, insurance and big items. I prefer paying by cash whenever possible because that way I feel as if I've got a better grasp on what I'm spending. ~ Geoff Capes

As Sharar pointed out, a large part of Europe's power consisted of its capacity to kill, which was enhanced by continuous and vicious wars among the region's small nations in the seventeenth century, a time when Asian countries knew relative peace.

'The only trouble with us,' Fukuzawa Yukichi, author, educator and prolific commentator on Japan's modernization, lamented in the 1870s, 'is that we have had too long a period of peace and no intercourse with outside. In the meantime, other countries, stimulated by occasional wars, have invented many new things such as steam trains, steam ships, big guns and small hand guns etc.' Required to fight at sea as well as on land, and to protect their slave plantations in the Caribbean, the British, for instance, developed the world's most sophisticated naval technologies. Mirza Abu Talib, an Indian Muslim traveller to Europe in 1800, was among the first Asians to articulate the degree to which the Royal Navy was the key to British prosperity. For much of the nineteenth century, British ships and commercial companies would retain their early edge in international trade over their European rivals, as well as over Asian producers and traders. ~ Pankaj Mishra

I've called Chicago home for nearly 25 years. It's a city of broad shoulders and big hearts and bold dreams; a city of legendary sports figures, legendary sports venues, and legendary sports fans; a city like America itself, where the world
the world's races and religions and nationalities come together and reach for the dream that brought them here. ~ Barack Obama

I'm the one who started spreading that particular factoid, about Bendis, Azz and me all being bald Brian's from Cleveland, just to get my name mentioned in the same sentence as two much-better writers, and it's worked like a goddamn charm. Next up, I'm going to grow a big, disgusting beard, just so people will start talking about Alan Moore and me in the same breath. ~ Brian K. Vaughan

I have a big ego, and I'm a confident person, but when it comes down to being a jerk, that doesn't work for me, I tried it ... for about ten years. ~ Harry Connick, Jr.