Great Idea Quotes

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case. ~ Chuck Close

It just seemed that we always ended up at the Rainbow, to the point where they finally just said, 'Why don't you guys go up into this loft, where we'll kind of protect people from coming around and sitting on the tables.' And we thought that was a great idea. ~ Alice Cooper

Having a great idea is important. But having a great team is also important. ~ Steve Case

Now, you two – this year, you behave yourselves. If I get one more owl telling me you've – you've blown up a toilet or –"
"Blown up a toilet? We've never blown up a toilet."
"Great idea though, thanks, Mum. ~ J.K. Rowling

Money is attracted to great ideas. ~ Robert G. Allen

The Great Idea in advertising is far more than the sum of the recognition scores, the ratings and all the other superficial indicators of its success; it is in the realm of myth, to which measurements cannot apply. ~ Leo Bogart

Why are women wearing perfumes that smell like flowers to attract men? Men don't like flowers. I have a great idea for a scent that will attract men - how about "New Car Interior"? ~ Rita Rudner

A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

Talon thought kissing Flit to shut him up might be a good idea.
He was wrong.
It was a fucking great idea. ~ Agatha Bird

Being creative and playing with your content during the holidays is a great idea. But straying too far from your fundamental brand (from address, logo, etc.) can be a dangerous game. Your recipients need to be able to recognize you during this busy time of year. ~ Paul Ford

Homosexuality is regarded as shameful by barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments just as philosophy is regarded as shameful by them, because it is apparently not in the interest of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or passionate love - all of which homosexuality is particularly apt to produce. ~ Plato

What one great idea resonates deeper in the soul than any other ... that we are free to choose. Next to life itself, the power to choose is your greatest gift. ~ Stephen Covey

A healthful hunger for a great idea is the beauty and blessedness of life. ~ Jean Ingelow

The unfolding over time of a great idea is like the growth of a fractal crystal, allowing details and refinements to multiply endlessly - but only in ever-increasing scale. ~ David Bayles

Cameras in the courtroom is a great idea. ~ Jeffrey Toobin

If you're not ready to be in a relationship, going out with someone much younger than you is probably a great idea, because you both can have a decent experience and hopefully nobody will end up feeling cheated when it ends. ~ Uma Thurman

There's usually some process by which a potentially great idea gets prostituted into something lacklustre, or by which the wrong idea gets put forward. ~ Clayton Christensen

This all sounds like a great idea with no chance of catastrophic failure. ~ Andy Weir

I think a duet with Janet is a great idea. ~ Paula Abdul

Rahul's great idea, he said that having either darkness or too much white made someone's sanity decay and made them easier to manipulate. In the dark, though, they felt they could hide, and in Rahul's words ... 'They can hide, but they can't run' he used that like a mantra. ~ Mercy Cortez

If you believe the world will be a better place because you have both the desire and the means to take charge, that's the time for you to jump in. It doesn't matter if you rise up to take the lead only once or twice in your entire working life or if you do it daily. There are so many moments when you can make a difference--by enriching an outcome, saving a great idea, defending the beleaguered or downtrodden, and not least, expressing your own gifts and wisdom. ~ Charlotte Beers

Derek said Andrew never went to bed before midnight. If we wanted to get him after he was sound asleep, that meant waiting until two.
To my surprise, I fell asleep, so soundly that i didn't hear the alarm on the watch Derek had given me earlier. I woke to Tori shaking me with one hand, while trying to shut off the alarm with the other.
I yawned and blinked hard.
"Running away after you've barley slept in a week isn't a great idea," she said. "Luckily, I anticipated this."
She popped open a can of coke and handed it to me.
"Not as good as coffee," she said. "But I bet you don't drink coffee do you?"
I shook my head as I gulped.
"Kids," she said, rolling her eyes. ~ Kelley Armstrong

My manager came up with the idea of taking a Pro Tool rig out on the road to record every night and I thought it was a great idea. I felt like it would be good to record over a certain period of time and then take the best performances of that collection of recordings. It appealed to me that it wasn't going to be from just one location. ~ Josh Turner

Brainstorming sounds like a great idea, but it doesn't work. Dozens of studies have demonstrated this conclusively. People produce more good ideas - twice as many - alone than they do together. One problem with brainstorming is ~ Eric Weiner

There was no single moment when I thought, Aha! What a great idea! Rather there was a slow and gradual accumulation of numerous small ideas. ~ Diane Setterfield

God is the ultimate recycler. We have a good planet here. It has its troubles, yes. We have overpopulation, we have pollution, we have global warming, we have the Thursday night television lineup," more laughter, "and, of course, we have the infected. We have a lot of problems on Earth, and it might seem like a great idea to hold the Rapture now - why wait? Let's move on to Heaven, and leave the trials and tribulations of our earthly existence behind us. Let's get while the getting's good, and beat the rush.

"It might seem like a great idea, but I don't think it is, for the same reason I don't think it's a great idea for a first grader to stand up and say that he's learned enough, he's done with school, thanks a lot but he's got it from here. Compared to God, we're barely out of kindergarten, and like any good teacher, I don't believe He intends to let us out of class just because we're finding the lessons a little difficult. I don't know whether I believe in the Rapture or not. I believe that if God wants to do it, He will… but I don't believe that it's coming in our lifetime. We have too much work left to do right here. ~ Mira Grant

A few months prior, Axl had also come up with a great idea for "Patience," seemingly out of nowhere, that had immediately become the story and melody of that song. The whistle part at the beginning was another ballsy and unusual move by Axl; the song just wouldn't be the same without it. "Patience" quickly became one of my favorite GN'R songs to play live. ~ Duff McKagan

Inside the calm minds, great ideas swim serenely like the morning geese of the misty lakes! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

A great idea is usually original to more than one discoverer. Great ideas come when the world needs them. Great ideas surround the world's ignorance and press for admission. ~ Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

I would love to have written Roger Zelazny's first five books of 'Amber.' What a great idea he had about the shadings of reality! ~ Carol Berg

We need innovation. We need great ideas that can be simply and effectively produced all over the place. ~ Helen Clark

Which features you choose to include or omit have a lot to do with less software too. Don't be afraid to say no to feature requests that are hard to do. Unless they're absolutely essential, save time/effort/confusion by leaving them out. Slow down too. Don't take action on an idea for a week and see if it still seems like a great idea after the initial buzz wears off. The extra marinading time will often help your brain come up with an easier solution. ~ Jason Fried

If you are a prospective entrepreneur with the desire to start and build a visionary company but have not yet taken the plunge because you don't have a "great idea," we encourage you to lift from your shoulders the burden of the great-idea myth. Indeed, the evidence suggests that it might be better to not obsess on finding a great idea before launching a company. Why? Because the great-idea approach shifts your attention away from seeing the company as your ultimate creation. ~ James C. Collins

You must fall in love with what you do, because being an entrepreneur is a lot of hard work, and overcoming a lot of adversity. From that love will come the dedication that will get you out of bed at 4 a.m. because of a great idea you just had and get you to work till 11 p.m. and not feel tired. ~ Ken Field

But really,' Rachel insisted, 'so unfair. Just as Christians automatically cannot be folks who give serious thought to what they are doing. As though millions of people for hundreds of years across hundreds of cultures have simply had it wrong. Chesterton was right when he claimed that 'the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried. ~ Carolyn Weber

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

In my opinion, the person who created the torture device called gym class should be clobbered with an enormous frozen cucumber. Not to mention, the person who decided it would be a great idea to schedule me in first period gym every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday also deserves a heavy-handed whacking with the same frozen cucumber. ~ Amy Holder

And then, in splendor and glory, came the great idea. He would write. He would be one of the eyes through which the world saw, one of the ears through which it heard, one of the hearts through which it felt. ~ Jack London

Today, people just want to live their lives, they don't need some great Idea. This is entirely new for Russia; it's unprecedented in Russian literature. At heart, we're built for war. We were always either fighting or preparing to fight. We've never known anything else - hence our wartime psychology. Even in civilian life, everything was always militarized. The drums were beating, the banners flying, our hearts leaping out of our chests. People didn't recognize their own slavery - they even liked being slaves. I ~ Svetlana Alexievich

TIP #5: Never stop thinking. No matter how dark the times, a great idea can give you a hopeful light. ~ Rob Buyea

Like having a great idea, life comes at you fast. It hits you and tries to escape and be expressed in any way possible. In a way, it's a lot like ... lightning. ~ Chris Colfer

War thoughts again. I think back to the business cards from that health shop earlier on. I think about miniature wars that individuals fight all the time. They fight against cellulite, or negative emotions, or addictions, or stress. I think about how we can now hire all different sorts of mercenaries to help us fight against ourselves…Therapists, manicurists, hairdressers, personal trainers, life coaches. But what's it all for? What do all these little wars achieve? Although it is a part of my life too, and I want to be thin and pretty and not laughed at in the street and not so stressed and mad that I start screaming on the tube, it suddenly seems a little bit ridiculous. All the time we do these things we are trying to enlist ourselves into a bigger war. We are trying to join up, constantly, with the enemy.
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Hitler tried to impose his shiny, blonde, neat, sparkling world on us all and we resisted. So how is it that when McDonald's and Disney and The Gap and L'Oreal and all the others try to do the same thing we all just say, 'OK'? Hitler needed marketing, that's all. His propaganda was, of course, brilliant for its time, everyone knows that. What a great idea, to make people feel that they belong to something, that their identity makes them special. If Hilter had bee able to enlist a twenty-first-century marketing department, would he have been able to sell Nazism to everyone? Why not? You can just see a beautiful, thin woman with her long blonde hair moving sof ~ Scarlett Thomas

In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn't such a great idea after all. ~ Strobe Talbott

He thinks that, even if you have a great idea, there have to be trials and tribulations, errors and failures, a dark night of the soul, a slog, a time in the desert, a fallow period, a period of quiet, a period of silent and earnest and frustrated toiling before emerging, victorious, into the sunshine and acclaim. ~ Charles Yu

The Internet has really democratized ideas. There are no real gatekeepers any more, because if you have a great idea, and you put it online, people will find it and it will get in front of who it needs to get in front of. ~ Justin Halpern

Somehow over the years people have gotten the impression that Wal-Mart was ... just this great idea that turned into an overnight success. But ... it was an outgrowth of everything we'd been doing since [1945] ... And like most overnight successes, it was about twenty years in the making. ~ James C. Collins

Great ideas are fish in a stream. Your pen/pencil is a spear. If you don't spear them, they'll swim on by. Be ready. ~ James Scott

Recovery challenges the established order and as such, is a 'great idea' along with the ideas of evolution or a 'round earth'; turning all our thinking upside down. ~ Laurie Davidson

It's very important who the president of the United States is. America is a great idea, so that's why it's a great country. ~ Fran Lebowitz

Because 98 percent of our ideas are not great ideas, or everyone would be a billionaire. So yeah. That's something people have had a lot of experience in: being told our idea is bad or our performance is bad. I think that's the one common thread between all working actors is that they have a pretty thick skin - or you'd like to hope. You're used to rejection, that's for sure. ~ Dax Shepard

We are the most focused company that I know of or have read of or have any knowledge of. We say no to good ideas every day. We say no to great ideas in order to keep the amount of things we focus on very small in number, so that we can put enormous energy behind the ones we do choose ... It's not just saying yes to the right products, it's saying no to many products that are good ideas, but just not nearly as good as other ones. ~ Tim Cook

His gaze flashes up to lock on mine. I see his intent a split second before it turns to action.
"Don't," I whisper.
He takes a step toward me anyway.
"We shouldn't," I say, not moving.
He prowls closer.
"No good can come of this," I point out.
His hands hit my shoulders and he hauls me into his chest.
"This is a bad idea," I breathe against his lips.
"This is a fucking great idea," he mutters.
And then I can't say anything else, can't even think of anything else, because his mouth is on mine. ~ Julie Johnson

Wait a second," I said. "If we're worried about an attack, why not just blow up the entrance? Seal the tunnel?" "Great idea!" Grover said. "I'll get the dynamite! ~ Rick Riordan

Probably those three things affect the most people: reproductive freedom, freedom from violence, and democratic families. But there may well be someone sitting at this table who has a great idea to do something else that wouldn't come under those umbrellas and that would really be great, and make all kinds of change. ~ Gloria Steinem

My friend Markus Zusak wrote a story from the point of view of death, 'The Book Thief.' I thought that's a great idea, where your omniscient narrator is death. I'm glad he had that idea because I wouldn't have been able to work so well with it. ~ Shaun Tan

A great idea will remain only that, just a great idea, unless you put action behind it. ~ Sherry Gareis

Behind every great idea is someone saying "It won't work" ~ John C. Maxwell

The theme of counterfeits, of those that produce and sell them, has always been part of the culture of M.I.A. When I was contacted by Versace, it seemed a great idea to invert the circle. Versace's designs have always been copied; now it's Versace that copies the copies, so those that copy must copy the copies. So this will continue. ~ M.I.A.

Every great religion is, in truth, a concentration of great ideas, capable, as all ideas are, of infinite expansion and adaptation. ~ Mary Augusta Ward

Innovation requires having at least three things: a great idea, the engineering talent to execute it, and the business savvy (plus deal-making moxie) to turn it into a successful product. ~ Walter Isaacson

A great idea is already an action! It is so powerful that it needs no time to turn into an action. It becomes action the day it was born! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

A genius is a man who has two great ideas. ~ Jacob Bronowski

I have this belief that if you have an idea, and you have to write it down to remember it, then it can't be a great idea. ~ Tino Sehgal

Every movie goes through that U-shape where you start with 'Oh that's a great idea. I love it.' Everything's possible and then you face 'Oh, we can't do that, and that's impossible, and that's a bad choice.' You go the practicality of it. And then you come up to 'Great.' But that middle part is when you don't have results yet. ~ Jennifer Yuh Nelson

Taylor grinned. "Well, I've been giving these things a lot of thought - "
" - You really have been busy these past twelve hours - "
" - and I feel as though I've peaked in the large firm environment. After all, there's only so much you can learn in one place - "
" - I'm pretty sure that's a line from a song - "
" - and so I was thinking that maybe I should start my own law firm."
With this having been declared, they both fell silent. After a long moment, Jason spoke first.
"I think that's a great idea."
Taylor jumped off the couch excitedly. "I know! I can see it now - Taylor Donovan and Associates. That has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"
Jason gave her the strangest look. "Don't you mean Taylor Andrews and Associates?"
Taylor laughed as if this was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard.
She stopped abruptly when she saw Jason's serious expression. "Ohh . . . I see our first fight as a married couple is going to be a big one. ~ Julie James

You need a great idea, but then you've got to carry it through. If you get it right, you're going to be a critical success. But not everyone who works hard gets it right, or has the success they deserve: there's an element of luck. ~ Ian Rankin

This isn't a good idea," I whispered, watching his lips come toward me.
"This is a fucking great idea," he muttered. Then he kissed me. ~ Kristen Ashley

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

Healthy curiosity is a great key in innovation. ~ Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

If you just go out and try to make money by starting a business, you're going to come up with something that's just like what everyone else has done. But if you look at the world and see opportunities that can be taken more seriously, then you come up with a great idea. ~ Blake Mycoskie

Anyway, the Rock Bottom Remainders get together once a year to play benefit concerts on behalf of literacy. You may have noticed that for some time now, literacy has been in a steep decline. I'm not saying the Remainders are totally responsible for this, but we're probably a factor, because as a band, we suck. We routinely play entire songs without ever reaching full agreement on the question of what specific key we are in. So when people hear us perform, their reaction often is, 'Maybe literacy isn't such a great idea'. ~ Dave Barry

You spend hours wrestling with yourself, trying to keep your vision intact, your intensity undiminished. Sometimes I have to stick my head under the tap to get my wits back. And for what? You know what publishing is like these days. Paper costs going up all the time. Nothing gets printed unless it can be made into a movie. Everything is media. Crooked politicians sell their unwritten memoirs for thousands. I've got a great idea for a novel. It's about a giant shark who's possessed by a demon while swimming in the Bermuda Triangle. And the demon talks in CB lingo, see? There'll be recipes in the back. ~ David Sedaris

All good management is the expression of one great idea ~ Robert Heller

He's suffering from Politicians' Logic. Something must be done, this is something, therefore we must do it. ~ Antony Jay

One great idea can be worth a fortune. ~ Chris Mentillo

Your opinion of your mental capacity may be great, but if your idea of intelligence is crude, your intelligence-producing thought will also be crude, and can produce only crude intelligence. It is therefore evident that to simply think that you are brilliant will not produce brilliancy, unless your understanding of brilliancy is made larger, higher and finer. ... . When your thinking is brilliant, you will be brilliant, but if your thinking is not brilliant you will not be brilliant, no matter how brilliant you may think you are. ~ Christian D. Larson

The personality is seldom, in the beginning, what it will be later on. For this reason the possibility of enlarging it exists, at least during the first half of life. The enlargement may be effected through an accretion from without, by new vital contents finding their way into the personality from outside and being assimilated. In this way a considerable increase of personality may be experienced. We therefore tend to assume that this increase comes only from without, thus justifying the prejudice that one becomes a personality by stuffing into oneself as much as possible from outside. But the more assiduously we follow this recipe, and the more stubbornly we believe that all increase has to come from without, the greater becomes our inner poverty. Therefore, if some great idea takes hold of us from outside, we must understand that it takes hold of us only because something in us responds to it and goes out to meet it. Richness of mind consists in mental receptivity, not in the accumulation of possessions. What comes to us from outside, and, for that matter, everything that rises up from within, can only be made our own if we are capable of an inner amplitude equal to that of the incoming content. Real increase of personality means consciousness of an enlargement that flows from inner sources. Without psychic depth we can never be adequately related to the magnitude of our object. It has therefore been said quite truly that a man grows with the greatness of his task. But he ~ C.G. Jung

Truthfully, the hardest part about fashion is not the vision or one great idea, but the execution of each aspect. ~ Monika Chiang

A lot of people have said to me, 'That's a great idea, running for president. You'll get booked for more speeches. You can write a book.' ~ John Bolton

We live in a fast-paced culture where we're asked to make snap decisions all day long, so I suppose cash-point donations feed into the immediacy of our life experience. So it's a great idea. But I think it needs careful handling. ~ Tamsin Greig

I've known people who had fantastic ideas, but who couldn't get the idea off the ground because they approached everything weakly. They thought that their ideas would somehow take off by themselves, or that just coming up with an idea was enough. Let me tell you something - it's not enough. It will never be enough. You have to put the idea into action. If you don't have the motivation and the enthusiasm, your great idea will simply sit on top of your desk or inside your head and go nowhere. ~ Donald Trump

At the end of the day, if you've got the great idea, and someone judges you've got the managerial capability, you'll probably get the backing for it. ~ John Caudwell

We are always looking for a grand program of action full of great ideas, when the thing is to begin by obeying the little ideas. ~ Paul Tournier

You cannot imagine what sorrow and anger seize one's whole soul when a great idea, which one has long and piously revered, is picked up by some bunglers and dragged into the street, to more fools like themselves, and one suddenly meets it in the flea market, unrecognizable, dirty, askew, absurdly presented, without proportion, without harmony, a toy for stupid children. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Great ideas behave like the Sun. Even in the middle of nowhere, they find people and shine on them! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

A ten-times increase in the weight-oriented density of batteries would enable so many other moonshots, if we can find a great idea. We just haven't found one yet. ~ Astro Teller

The United States, or the American Republic, has a mission, and is chosen of God for the realization of a great idea. It has been chosen not only to continue the work assigned to Greece and Rome, but to accomplish a greater work than was assigned to either. In art, it will prove false to its mission if it do not rival Greece; and in science and philosophy, if it do not surpass it. In the State, in law, in jurisprudence, it must continue and surpass Rome. ~ Orestes Brownson

I love grocery shopping when I'm home. That's what makes me feel totally normal. I love both the idea of home as in being with my family and friends, and also the idea of exploration. I think those two are probably my great interests. ~ Yo-Yo Ma

A culture of commitment and trust isn't a magic bullet. It doesn't guarantee that a product will sell or an idea will bear fruit. But it's the best bet for making sure the right conditions are in place when a great idea comes along. That ~ Charles Duhigg

I'd rather say no and have said no and do say no often. I walk away from projects if it doesn't feel right; if it's not the right team of people pulling in together or if the script isn't right. It could be a great idea but the script doesn't work. ~ Blair Underwood

Once upon a time, there was a man who was convinced that he possessed a Great Idea. Indeed, as the man thought upon the Great Idea more and more, he realized that it was not just a great idea, but the most wonderful idea ever. The Great Idea would unravel the mysteries of the universe, supersede the authority of the corrupt and error-ridden Establishment, confer nigh-magical powers upon its wielders, feed the hungry, heal the sick, make the whole world a better place, etc. etc. etc.
The man was Francis Bacon, his Great Idea was the scientific method, and he was the only crackpot in all history to claim that level of benefit to humanity and turn out to be completely right. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

The idea that cinema can be dangerous is a great idea. ~ Michael Moore

You give out free bites of your banana bread for a couple of days, you'll be beating them back with a stick," I told him. "Hey!" he yelled, his head snapping back to look at me. "Great idea!" Sunny turned to Shambles. "Why didn't we think of that?" "Because half the time we're stoned?" Shambles asked back. ~ Kristen Ashley

This idea is a great idea, and a Christian idea could not have found fuller expression. Repentance can go no further than the astonishing heroic deed that you have contemplated, if only ... ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realize what's wrong with it. ~ Rex Harrison

Let's talk about me!" Generally speaking, that's not a great idea for handling yourself in social situations. A better plan is to listen and ask questions. Being interested in others is the way to make friends and influence people. In bonding readers to characters on the page, however, the reverse is true. We open our hearts to those whose hearts are first open to us. For ~ Donald Maass

What do you do when you are faced with several different gods each claiming the same territory? The Babylonian Marduk and the Greek Zeus was each considered master of the sky and king of gods. You might also decide, since they had quite different attributes, that one of them was merely invented by the priests. But if one, why not both? And so it was that the great idea arose, the realization that there might be a way to know the world without the god hypothesis; that there might be principles, forces, laws of nature, through which the world could be understood without attributing the fall of every sparrow to the direct intervention of Zeus. ~ Carl Sagan

A great idea will never amount to anything ... if you don't ever put it into action. ~ Timothy Pina

To die for one's great ideas is glorious - and easy. The horror is to outlive them. That is our worst capability. ~ Pearl Mary Teresa Craigie

Any idea's a great idea as long as it tastes great. ~ Homaro Cantu