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 Est. 1998

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Every New Idea, or supposed New Idea, is a light which attracts the moths. ~Ella Wheeler Wilcox, "Self Conquest," The Heart of The New Thought, 1902


Good ideas often take wings and fly beyond our reach, while bad ones will cling to us like barnacles to a vessel. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Sparks from the Philosopher's Stone, 1882


Ideas can no more flow backward than can a river. ~Victor Hugo


BRAIN:  A commodity as scarce as radium and more precious, used to fertilize ideas. ~Elbert Hubbard


New ideas are but gathered fragments from the past. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Seven Seventy Seven Sensations, 1897


The wings of change always flutter on the fire of ideas. ~Viswo Varenya Samal, May 2011 entry to The Quote Garden create your own quote contest on Twitter, @quotegarden


Crystal ideas are often broken by the grapple with words. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Seven Seventy Seven Sensations, 1897


Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. ~Howard Aiken, as quoted in Robert Byrne, The Fifth and Far Finer than the First Four 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said, 1993


I'm not sure the Great Ideas come to us when we're looking for them. Most likely they come when we don't expect them, like hiccups and hives. But it is worth trying. Meditation calms the spirit. ~Jack Smith, God and Mr. Gomez, 1974


Philosophers have sometimes said that all ideas come from experience; they never could have been poets and must have forgotten that they were ever children. ~George Santayana, "The Suppressed Madness of Sane Men," Little Essays Drawn from the Writings of George Santayana, with the collaboration of the author, by Logan Pearsall Smith, 1921


All the things that men and nations do are the outcome of instinctive motives reacting upon the ideas which talk and books and newspapers and schoolmasters and so forth have put into people's heads. Physical necessities, pestilences, changes of climate, and the like outer things may deflect and distort the growth of human history, but its living root is thought. All human history is fundamentally a history of ideas. ~H. G. Wells, et al., The Outline of History, 1920–1921


But hey, I shouldn't bring an umbrella to a brainstorm, so I appreciate you getting the ball rolling. ~Ted Lasso, "Goodbye Earl," 2021, written by Brendan Hunt  [S2, E1, Ted]


Great ideas need landing gear as well as wings. ~Quoted by Adolph A. Berle, Jr., in New York Times Book Review, per The Reader's Digest, 1955  [In 1983, Reader's Digest attributed the same quotation to C. D. Jackson. —tg]


Ideas are more elusive than mercury, more numerous than stars, more valuable than gold. ~William Arthur Ward, Thoughts of a Christian Optimist, 1968


More dreamlike than ever, I seem to be on something like a ship's bridge, and all that crowd of ideas are dropping into fresh positions under my command. And there are new ideas too, mixed up with age-old prejudices... All sorts of ideas that have been bandied about between myself and Foxfield come up from the bottom of my mind like fermenting scum. ~H. G. Wells, Apropos of Dolores, 1938


Then one day he got what a gambler calls a "hunch"... His friends thought him crazy, as friends always think when a man has an original idea and acts on it. Now, when his friends speak of him they invariably add, "I knew him when—." ~Edwin Carty Ranck, "Interesting People: Charles E. Bullard, A Famous Photographer of Cats," The American Magazine, April 1915


Ideas corrode the international fences. ~Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)


I hope some animal never bores a hole in my head and lays its eggs in my brain, because later you might think you're having a good idea but it's just eggs hatching. ~Jack Handey, Deepest Thoughts: So Deep They Squeak, 1994, deepthoughtsbyjackhandey.com


      I am, I realize, muddy-minded. My mind is not comprehensive enough and it is too congested by minor issues and impulsions, to take a clear view of existence. It is encumbered like a crystal trying to form in a magma loaded with irrelevant matter. But nevertheless it has a considerable apprehension of potentialities. The shape of the crystal, the form of this world is perceptible to me. It is the common lot to be muddy-minded; I am muddy-minded, you are muddy-minded, he is muddy-minded; past, present and future indicative you can conjugate it; nevertheless I believe, that by getting numbers of people to think as hard as they can and state as clearly as they can, and then by bringing their results together, gradually, steadily, a clearing-up is possible. That clearing-up is going on even now but it might go on much faster. Philosophers, teachers, editors and publishers — for I rank all these servers-up of ideas together — should be the ushers of the crowd. That is what a publisher should be; that is all a sane philosopher pretends to be...
      I believe that a just general idea of a new life for mankind is existent — latent — amidst the confusions of our time, and that as it emerges to lucidity, it will have compelling power in the measure of its lucidity... As the Right Thing to Do becomes patent, we shall fall into our rôles. ~H. G. Wells, Apropos of Dolores, 1938


My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living. ~Anaïs Nin


An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them. ~Stephen Fry, The Liar, 1991


No matter how brilliantly an idea is stated, we will not really be moved unless we have already half-thought of it ourselves.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1963


You can't beat ideas — political, social, economic or religious — with implements. ~Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)

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