Quotes & Sayings About Brilliant Ideas

Bernanke has cultivated this idea that he is a brilliant scholar of The Great Depression, but that's not true at all. — David Stockman

Granted, sorting bad ideas from good isn't easy. (One trick that works for us is a cooling-off period. Ideas nearly always seem brilliant when they're hatched, so we never act on a new idea for at least twenty-four hours. It is remarkable how stinky some ideas become after just one day in the sun.) — Anonymous

There are ... otherwise quite decent people who are so dull of nature that they believe that they must attribute the swift flight of fancy to some illness of the psyche, and thus it happens that this or that writer is said to create not other than while imbibing intoxicating drink or that his fantasies are the result of overexcited nerves and resulting fever. But who can fail to know that, while a state of psychical excitement caused by the one or other stimulant may indeed generate some lucky and brilliant ideas, it can never produce a well-founded, substantial work of art that requires the utmost presence of mind. — E.T.A. Hoffmann

Ideas nearly always seem brilliant when they're hatched, so we never act on a new idea for at least twenty-four hours. — Steven D. Levitt

Artists need support, time and money to develop their ideas, and if people rip stuff off, you don't have to be that brilliant to figure out that you're ultimately going to affect the end product. — John Polson

It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day; the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tendered kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet. — Washington Irving

Quantity is not necessarily synonymous with quality and brilliant ideas are not a function of the number of titles printed. — Carlo M. Cipolla

we hear brilliant and great suggestions when failure comes our way — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Some people have great ideas maybe once or twice in their life, and then they discover electricity or fire or outer space or something. I mean, the kind of brilliant ideas that change the whole world.
Some people never have them at all ... I get them two or three times a week. — Neil Gaiman

Wes [Anderson] is brilliant, kind, and just absolutely fantastic. He was really amazing in the way he can just take ideas, turn them into such beautiful stories, and then bring them to life with these amazing films the way he does. — Kara Hayward

We are beginning to learn that intangibles have more specific gravity than we suspected, that ideas can generate as much forward thrust as Atlas missiles. We may win a victory in exploring the infinities of outer space, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory unless we can also explore the infinities of our inner spirit. We have supersensitive thermographs to show us the slightest variations in skin temperature. No devices can teach us the irrelevance of skin color. WE can transplant a heart from one person to another in a brilliant feat of surgical virtuosity. Now we are ready to try it the hard way: transplanting understanding, compassion, and love from one person to another. — Lloyd Alexander

Success is hastened or delayed by one's habits. It is not your passing inspirations or brilliant ideas so much as your everyday mental habits that control your life. — Paramahansa Yogananda

There are many really stupid ideas that wind up being brilliant, if you can implement them. — Gene Simmons

I absolutely love this. Top notch art and scripting encapsulating a brilliant idea. — Leinil Francis Yu

It was one of my more brilliant ideas, and between you and me, that's saying something. — J.K. Rowling

For the remainder of the meal, Ruairi sat and listened while the woman laughed at Fagan's jesting, cast smiles at Fagan, and asked him questions about Ruairi's home. Clearly Ruairi couldn't answer, so his only option was to sit mute. Perhaps this wasn't one of his most brilliant ideas. Mistress Denny must think him daft. He took another drink from his tankard and tried to think of all the ways to kill the captain of his guard. Her gentle laugh tinkled through the air. Her nearness was overpowering, but it had been quite a long time since he had shared his bed with a woman. When visions suddenly appeared of the sultry temptress lying beneath him, a cynical inner voice cut through his thoughts. He hated when his cock ruled his mind.
Ruari brought his tankard to his lips and took another big gulp, quickly realizing he needed something much stronger than what was in his cup. — Victoria Roberts

My rear end was blood-raw from my so called brilliant ideas rebounding on me. — Malorie Blackman

I've seen people that are extremely brilliant and they don't have the staying power. They don't have that never give up quality. I've always said that other than bad ideas, which is a reason for failure, the ability to never ever quit or give up is something that is very, very important for success as an entrepreneur. — Donald Trump

Good ideas are common - what's uncommon are people who will work hard enough to bring them about. — Ashleigh Brilliant

The brilliant thing about swimming is that, while you're doing it, there's nothing else you could be getting on with, like the ironing or sorting out the children. My mind goes into free-float mode; some of the best ideas for plots come into my head while I'm ploughing up and down the pool. — Sophie Hannah

You can never discard too many bad ideas. — Ashleigh Brilliant

Innovators have to be open. They have to be able to imagine things that others cannot and be willing to challenge their own preconceptions. They also need to be conscientious. An innovator who has brilliant ideas but lacks the discipline and persistence to carry them out is merely a dreamer ... But crucially, innovators need to be disagreeable ... They are people willing to take social risks-to do things that others might disapprove of. — Malcolm Gladwell

Recently, the search for what he calls "the splinters that make up different attention problems" has taken Castellanos in a new direction. First, he explains that your brain is far less concerned with your brilliant ideas or searing emotions than with its own internal "gyroscopic busyness," which consumes 65 percent of its total energy. Every fifty seconds, its activity fluctuates, causing what he calls a "brownout." No one knows the purpose of these neurological events, but Castellanos has a thesis: the clockwork pulses enable the brain's circuits to stay "logged on" and available to communicate with one another, even when they're not being used. "Imagine you're a cabdriver on your day off," Castellanos says. "You don't need to use your workday circuits on a Sunday, but to keep those channels open, your brain sends a ping through them every minute or so. The fluctuations are the brain's investment in maintaining its circuits online. — Winifred Gallagher

Don't trust a brilliant idea unless it survives the hangover. — Jimmy Breslin

A brilliant idea is like a baby in a mothers womb.
You need to bring it out in the world, nurture it, feed it, grow it, till it becomes big enough to take care of itself.
If you leave it at the stage of an idea itself, it is as good as non existent. — Manoj Arora

[ ... ] but just as formerly these pursuits and ideas had seemed petty and insignificant in comparison with the darkness that overshadowed all existence, so now they seemed as petty and insignificant in comparison with the brilliant sunshine in which the future was bathed. He went on with his work but now he felt that the centre of gravity of his attention had shifted, making him look at his work quite differently and with greater clarity. Formerly this work had been an escape from life: he used to feel that without it life would be too gloomy. Now he needed it so that life might not be too uniformly bright. — Leo Tolstoy

We all know, however, that the enormous weight of tradition, habit, and custom that occupies the greater part of our brain bears down pitilessly on the more brilliant and innovative ideas of which the remaining part is capable, and although it is true that, in some cases, this weight can balance the excesses and extravagances of the imagination that would lead us God knows where were they given free rein, it is equally true that it often has a way of subtly submitting what we believed to be our free will to unconscious tropisms, like a plant that does not know why it will always have to lean toward the side from which the light comes. — Jose Saramago

To be open to inspiration, one must cultivate a leaning for the problematic, a chronic attraction to things that do not totally fit, agree, or make sense. Inspired ideas are less often solutions to old problems than newly discovered or totally reformulated problems - problems 'created' like brilliant works of art. — Robert Grudin

Getting seasick?" the inspector asked him at one point.
"No. Just sick of myself."
"Why?"
"Because every now and then I realize what a stupid shit I am to go along with some of your brilliant ideas. — Andrea Camilleri

Until such time as one has put to oneself a certain number of questions about an author, and has answered them, be it only to oneself alone and under one's breath, one cannot be sure of having grasped him completely, even though the questions may seem quite foreign to the nature of his writings: What were his religious ideas? How did the spectacle of nature affect him? How did he behave in the matter of women, of money? Was he rich, poor; what was his diet, his daily routine? What was his vice or his weakness? None of the answers to these questions is irrelevant. Even so, the answers tend to be surprising. However brilliant, however wise the work, it seems that the lives of artists can be relied upon to exhibit an extraordinary, incongruous range of turmoil, misery, and stupidity. — Alain De Botton

I have a number of symptoms that are neurotic and are constricting in the sense that if I had a brilliant idea for a film that had to be shot in Tulsa, OK I would tear it up and throw it away. Anything outside of New York, 'cause I can't exist in a hotel outside of my own home, I have to be in my own home and my own environment. This is a neurotic symptom that is constricting to my work even. — Woody Allen

Moshe Dayan would wake up with a hundred ideas. Of them ninety-five were dangerous; three more had to be rejected; the remaining two, however, were brilliant. — Ariel Sharon

People are incredibly rude about it sometimes. Like, 'What? You're married?' Strange reaction to have. Proves what people's ideas about marriage are. 'We're having a baby.' 'What?' As if it's the end of the world. Of course, it's the start of a brilliant world. — Ewan McGregor

Why do all your brilliant ideas involve felonies? — Kathy Reichs

Vincent had ten major ideas every week: three brilliant, five good, and two ridiculous. — Jean-Dominique Bauby

It's about how to deal with the idea killer in your own head, the part of your brain where fear and knowledge keep you from executing the brilliant ideas your mind generates every day. — Kevin Kelly

Beautiful woman wrapped in chadors, with huge machine guns in their hands. Brilliant, shocking, amazingly contradictory images. They compelled me to deeply investigate these ideas. — Shirin Neshat

David Bowie really played with ideas, and iconography and imagery. He's brilliant man. And a gentleman, too. — Madonna Ciccone

I felt like all of the work was training for just one central idea: Accept your child for who he is. I'm not saying that I've done a brilliant job with that. But I've done my best. — Andrew Solomon

But I'm blessed to work with great people. I collaborate with brilliant stylists both here and in Paris. I work with a great design team. I really allow everyone to bring their ideas. I almost rely on them to inspire me. — Marc Jacobs

The fixed-mindset premise that great geniuses do not need great teams. They just need little helpers to carry out their brilliant ideas. — Carol S. Dweck

Like so many brilliant people, he believes that ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains; ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work. — Peter F. Drucker

It's no use to decide what's going to happen unless you have the courage of your convictions. Many a brilliant idea has been lost because the man who dreamed it lacked the spunk of the spine to put it across. — Amadeo Giannini

I saw brilliant ideas coming out of the [Chipko] movement that needed better articulation, that needed elaboration and systematic analysis. I just followed that and it's been very exciting. — Vandana Shiva

In my view, ideas and other intellectual productions are more interesting, more indicative of intelligence, and more productively debated than IQ alone. — Christopher Langan

I don't know whose brilliant idea that was, but it wasn't mine, that's for sure. — Ozzy Osbourne

It's not all that important that you be able to originate brilliant ideas... The more important talent is to be able to recognize good ideas from other people. — Eric S. Raymond

The ideas which now pass for brilliant innovations and advances are in fact mere revivals of ancient errors, and a further proof of the dictum that those who are ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it. — Henry Hazlitt

I always say the first sign of a good idea is a lot of people not believing in it. I can tell you this right now, if you have an idea that makes complete logical sense and people don't believe in it, then you probably have a brilliant idea. — Steve Stoute

No, let us not make God in our image, poor inhabitants that we are of a distant planet lost in infinite space. However brilliant and sublime our intelligence may be, it is scarcely more than a small spark which shines and in an instant is extinguished, and it alone can give us no idea of that blaze, that conflagration, that ocean of light! — Jose Rizal

All of us, at some point in life, get brilliant ideas ... only a few of us have the courage to take the next step. — Manoj Arora

When we have a brilliant idea, instead of making others think it is ours, why not let them cook and stir the idea themselves. — Dale Carnegie

My mind contains many good ideas, but it's not always easy to squeeze one out. — Ashleigh Brilliant

Angelo is a brilliant jazz talent. His receptivity, seriousness, his ability to execute ideas simple or complex, combined with his love and feel for the substance of jazz reveal why he is an exceptional artist. — Mulgrew Miller

A great thinker does not necessarily have to discover a master idea but has to rediscover and to affirm a true but forgotten, ignored or misunderstood master idea and interpret it in all the diverse aspects of thought not previously done, in a powerful and consistent way, despite surrounding ignorance and opposition. This criterion we think would include all prophets and their true followers among the Muslim scholars. He is both a great and original thinker who brings new meanings and interpretations to old ideas, thereby providing both continuity and originality to the important intellectual and cultural problems of his time and through it, of mankind. Thus the brilliant interpretations of scholars and sages like al-Ghazali and Mulla Sadra then, and Iqbal and al-Attas now, deserve to be recognized and acknowledged as manifesting certain qualities of greatness and originality. — Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud

While in the process of executing an idea, creativity happens not with one brilliant flash but in a chain reaction of many tiny sparks. — R. Keith Sawyer

Louise Frogley is a brilliant designer. I always find her wardrobe fittings really informative and creative. Together, you kick images and ideas around. — Cate Blanchett

Let's never forget that whatever brilliant ideas you have or hear, that the opposite may also be true. — Derek Sivers

He was not only the most brilliant strategist of all our generals, but he had a good political sense. A man of that quality was too difficult for Hitler to swallow for long. At conferences Manstein often differed from Hitler, in front of others, and would go so far as to declare that some of the ideas which Hitler put forward were nonsense. — Erich Von Manstein

You know what I was thinking? [Ruthie] got so excited when she was spouting this ahistorical countertextual nonsense, and I caught myself thinking, 'What an idiot her teacher must be,' and thinking about her teacher made me realize - the kind of excitement she was showing as she mindlessly spouted back the nonsense she learned in college, that's just like the excitement some of my own students show. And it occurred to me that what we professors think of as a 'brilliant student' is nothing but a student who is enthusiastically converted to whatever idiotic ideas we've been teaching them."
"Self-knowledge is a painful thing," said Esther. "To learn that your best students are parrots after all. — Orson Scott Card

For the record, I blame you for this."

"Me?" huffed Shahin. "This was your idea."

"Well...you should have talked me out of it! You and your brilliant schemes - bah! This particular detail will not go into our report, understand?"

"Rest assured, you'll find me silent as the grave on this point."

"And stop using morbid expressions! — Jennifer McKeithen

My friend had a brilliant idea. This impressed me. It reflected an immense deal of credit on his brain. But when he expressed it,it lost all value, and enjoyed but a commonplace status. My friend blamed this devaluation on the language. "I hate English," he said. So he studied another language. He mastered it so perfectly that there was no room left in his brain for a brilliant idea. Now he has a grudge against words. He refuses to use them. He prefers to shrug or grunt. A new crop of ideas is growing. They show promise of future refinement. — Marvin L. Cohen

There is also a particular area of sleep called slow-wave sleep. I immediately liked this idea. It turns out this part of sleep is where the brain basically gets into step with itself and gets into this one single phase of these relatively slow brain waves - around 10 Hz or so - and the whole brain 'fires all at once'. This is a brilliant bit of sleep where we consolidate memory and learning, and memory is one of my obsessions really. — Max Richter

These days people are much more aware that mathematics is a communal endeavor: even the most brilliant idea gets meaning only from its relation to the whole. — Dusa McDuff

Time and again, racist ideas have not been cooked up from the boiling pot of ignorance and hate. Time and again, powerful and brilliant men and women have produced racist ideas in order to justify the racist policies of their era, in order to redirect the blame for their era's racial disparities away from those policies and onto Black people. — Ibram X. Kendi

If a person has never given writing a try, they assume that a brilliant idea is hard to come by. But really, even if it takes some digging, ideas are out there. Just open your eyes and look at the world. Writing the ideas down, it turns out, is the real trick. — Ann Patchett

A man can only lead when others accept him as their leader, and he has only as much authority as his subjects give to him. All of the brilliant ideas in the world cannot save your kingdom if no one will listen to them. — Brandon Sanderson

What you end up seeing when you look at history is that people who have been good at pushing the boundaries of possibility, and exploring those frontiers of good ideas and innovations, have rarely done it in moments of great inspiration. They don't just have a brilliant breakthrough idea out of nowhere and leap ahead of everyone else. — Steven Johnson

[Hannah:] Here is to Rylie Cates: May your pens never run out of ink, your computer never run out of power, and your brain never run out of brilliant ideas. — Jessica Lave

There is no idea so brilliant or original that a sufficiently-untalented writer can't screw it up. — Raymond E. Feist

Ned looked to DeVere. "You are the master of mayhem. Any brilliant ideas?"
"If we want him to leave the gate, we must provide proper motivation," DeVere answered.
"Such as?" Phoebe prompted.
"Let us keep to the basics, my pet. Men are primarily moved by either their stomachs or their cocks. If we cannot tempt the one, it must be the other."
Ned glared. "What are you suggesting?"
"Our little chambermaid can take the blighter off by offering him a hand job."
"The hell she will!" Ned barked before Phoebe could answer for herself. "Think of something else!"
"Come now, Ned. She'll be well compensated for her trouble. He laughed. "Hell, for a thousand, I might be tempted to do it myself."
A WILD NIGHT'S BRIDE — Victoria Vane

There they are.
The extreme definiteness with which they stand, now a brilliant white, again yellow, and in some lights red, imposes ideas of durability, of the emergence through the earth of some spiritual energy elsewhere dissipated in elegant trifles. But durability exists independently of our admiration. Although the beauty is sufficiently humane to weaken us, to stir the deep deposit of mud - memories, abandonments, regrets, sentimental devotions - the Parthenon is separate from all that; and if you consider how it has stood out at night, for centuries, you begin to connect the blaze (at midnight the glare is dazzling and the frieze almost invisible) with the idea that perhaps it is beauty alone that is immortal. — Virginia Woolf

You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can't get them across, your ideas won't get you anywhere. — Lee Iacocca

It's great when a huge amount of money goes from a dumb corporation into the hands of an awesome band with brilliant ideas who can use it to keep being a band for a year, as opposed to a band that's already huge taking one of those things - that's more pathetic. — Alex Scally

ISIS is recruiting through the Internet. ISIS is using the Internet better than we are using the Internet, and it was our idea. What I wanted to do is I wanted to get our brilliant people from Silicon Valley and other places and figure out a way that ISIS cannot do what they're doing. — Donald Trump

You know, it's one thing about intellectuals, they prove that you can be absolutely brilliant and have no idea what's going on. — Woody Allen

I am more of a sponge than an inventor. I absorb ideas from every source. I take half-matured schemes for mechanical development and make them practical. I am a sort of a middleman between the long-haired and impractical inventor and the hard-headed business man who measures all things in terms of dollars and cents. My principal business is giving commercial value to the brilliant but misdirected ideas of others. — Thomas A. Edison

Stanley Kubrick was brilliant at getting under the audience's skin. He was very interested in the idea of, 'How can I tell this with just a camera?' — Tom Cruise

I don't believe in the creativity of the curator. I don't think that the exhibition-maker has brilliant ideas around which the works of artists must fit. Instead, the process always starts with a conversation, in which I ask the artists what their unrealized projects are, and then the task is to find the means to realize them.
pg 10 — Hans Ulrich Obrist

In a democracy, every little wrong idea may grow up to become national policy. — Ashleigh Brilliant

Brod was a brilliant intellectual with exceptional energy; a generous man willing to do battle for others; his attachment to Kafka was warm and disinterested. The only problem was his artistic orientation: a man of ideas, he knew nothing of the passion for form; his novels (he wrote twenty of them) are sadly conventional; and above all: he understood nothing at all about modern art.
Why, despite all this, was Kafka so fond of him? What about you-do you stop being fond of your best friend because he has a compulsion to write bad verse? — Milan Kundera

Brilliant ideas are gifts from God, sent to you in answer to your prayers ... and all you need to do is act upon the ideas, one divinely guided step at a time. If you want to validate if an idea is truly heavensent, ask your angels to send you clear signs. — Doreen Virtue

It's important not to overstate the benefits of ideas. Quite frankly, I know it's kind of a romantic notion that you're just going to have this one brilliant idea and then everything is going to be great. But the fact is that coming up with an idea is the least important part of creating something great. It has to be the right idea and have good taste, but the execution and delivery are what's key. — Sergey Brin

No growth hack, brilliant marketing idea, or sales team can save you long term if you don't have a sufficiently good product. — Sam Altman

All my sermons are prepared in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. As recreation is most pleasant and profitable in the sun, so homiletic creativity is best nourished before the Eucharist. The most brilliant ideas come from meeting God face to face. The Holy Spirit that presided at the Incarnation is the best atmosphere for illumination. Pope John Paul II keeps a small desk or writing pad near him whenever he is in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament; and I have done this all my life - I am sure for the same reason he does, because a lover always works better when the beloved is with him. — Fulton J. Sheen

My eyes narrowed. "You said it was a brilliant idea."
"I think lots of things are brilliant ideas. Like nuclear weapons, zero-calorie soft drinks, and blue jean vests," he replied. "That doesn't mean we should nuke people, or that diet drinks taste good, or that you should run out to the local Walmart and buy a jean vest. You people shouldn't always listen to me. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Civically engaged, business oriented, technology obsessed, and socially skilled, Franklin was "our founding Yuppie," declares the New York Times columnist David Brooks. Franklin "would have felt right at home in the information revolution," Walter Isaacson writes in his biography of the statesman. "We can easily imagine having a beer with him after work, showing him how to use the latest digital device, sharing the business plan of a new venture, and discussing the most recent political scandals or policy ideas." The essence of Franklin's appeal is that he was brilliant but practical, interested in everything, but especially in how things work. — Fareed Zakaria

Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for those are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history. — Will Durant

I have years of saying ideas that are not listened to. Then, weeks after, of producers finding out that I was right when some other guy comes in and says it. Sometimes I just tell my idea to my editor or to some other guy with maybe gray hair to share it, and then it's brilliant! — Patricia Riggen

When we're in the shower, when we're thinking about our idea - boy, does it sound brilliant. But the reality is that most of our ideas are actually terrible. — Eric Ries

And it occurred to me that what we professors think of as a 'brilliant student' is nothing but a student who is enthusiastically converted to whatever idiotic ideas we've been teaching them. — Orson Scott Card

You meet somebody at the seashore on a vacation and have a wonderful time together. Or in a corner at a party, while the glasses clink and somebody beats on a piano, you talk with a stranger whose mind seems to whet and sharpen your own and with whom a wonderful new vista of ideas is spied. Or you share some intense or painful experience with somebody, and discover a deep communion. Then afterward you are sure that when you meet again, the gay companion will give you the old gaiety, the brilliant stranger will stir your mind from its torpor, the sympathetic friend will solace you with the old communion of spirit. But something happens, or almost always happens, to the gaiety, the brilliance, the communion. You remember the individual words from the old language you spoke together , but you have forgotten the grammar. You remember the steps of the dance, but the music isn't playing any more. So there you are. — Robert Penn Warren

I've just surfaced from spending several days in a state of rapture: I was reading a book ... I felt alive and engaged and positively brilliant, bursting with ideas, brimming with memories of other books I've loved. — Nora Ephron

At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top - I'm afraid that's not quite right. — Bill Gates

It is not your passing thoughts or brilliant ideas so much as your plain everyday habits that control your life ... Live simply. Don't get caught in the machine of the world - it is too exacting. By the time you get what you are seeking your nerves are gone, the heart is damaged, and the bones are aching. Resolve to develop your spiritual powers more earnestly from now on. Learn the art of right living. If you have joy you have everything,so learn to be glad and contented ... Have happiness now. — Paramahansa Yogananda

It's only those exceptional and rare individuals who have brilliant ideas delivered to them by the muse, complete and gift wrapped. The rest of us have to work at it. — Alan Moore

we hear the most brilliant ideas and suggestions we failure comes our way — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000. — Derek Sivers

If anything, it's a little intimidating because there's usually a lot of brilliant work and a lot of brilliant ideas out there that you wish you had thought of, or that you just admire for the originality of it or the difference from what you've been thinking of. — Chris Wedge

So it turns out that late-night flashes of brilliance often look a little less brilliant in the bright light of morning. — Stacey Kade