Original Idea Quotes & Sayings

It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original. — David Brin

Well, it was never supposed to be like that. Walt died before we had finished. The original idea of Walt's was that you came down there, into the caves, and there were no pirates. But they had been there just seconds before! There was a hot meal on the table, steaming. — John Hench

The original idea of blog publishing was that writer and reader would be on the same level. That it would be a conversation - not a lecture. People lost sight of that. We didn't. Kinja is designed to break down the walls of the ghettos. So that everybody - editor, writer, source, subject, expert, fan - can be a contributor. — Nick Denton

I can't build a simple shelf. I have no idea how to change an oil filter on a car. I can't even stick a stamp on an envelope straight. And I'm always dialling the wrong number. But I have come up with a few original cocktails that people seem to like. — Haruki Murakami

My original idea was to produce and not make records myself. — T Bone Burnett

In my opinion nothing has contributed more to the corruption of the original idea of socialism as the belief that Russia is a socialist country. — George Orwell

Deceit for personal gain is one of history's most recurring crimes. Man's first step towards change would be thinking, counter-arguing, re-thinking, twisting, straightening, perfecting, then believing every original idea he intends to make public before making it public. There is always an angle from which an absolute truth may appear askew just as there is always a personal emotion, or a personal agenda, which alienates the ultimate good of mankind. — Criss Jami

My own view, which does not rely solely on religious faith or even on an original idea, but rather on ordinary common sense, is that establishing binding ethical principles is possible when we take as our starting point the observation that we all desire happiness and wish to avoid suffering. — Dalai Lama

Our original idea was to help three or four hundred candidates in the first election run for the Ohio State legislature and the California legislature around the country. — Pete Du Pont

That was the original idea, but once you've got a controlled population with a wall around it and no oversight, you can do anything you want. — Margaret Atwood

The idea of harnessing the intelligence of the readership has been lost in the quest for Facebook likes. For many, readers have become synonymous with hateful commenters. It's time for a renewed push to realize some of the original dreams of the web. — Nick Denton

For someone who is starting out on developing their critical skills, just being aware of its existence is great: it can make the difference between trying to write a story around a cliche or an original idea, and better still, studying it can eventually clue you in on how to breathe new life into tired tropes. — Charles Stross

It's true that the original idea was mine, but what you see today is the work of probably tens of thousands of the world's best engineers, all concentrating on improving the product, reducing the cost, things of that sort. — Jack Kilby

All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. — H.L. Mencken

There may be no less original idea than the notion that our hearts hold dominion over our heads. — Nancy Gibbs

What's given, in fact, always depends on the person or thing it's given to. A minor incident in the street brings the cook to the door and entertains him more than I would be entertained by contemplating the most original idea, by reading the greatest book, or by having the most gratifying of useless dreams. If life is basically monotony, he has escaped it more than I. And he escapes it more easily than I. The truth isn't with him or with me, because it isn't with anyone, but happiness does belong to him. — Fernando Pessoa

Right now, 70 percent of the people don't have computers. And where they're needed most, people don't have them. We think this will enable anyone to own a computer. We're aiming at everybody who uses a computer as an information access device. The original idea was to build one cheaply enough to put one on every desk. — Larry Ellison

Once the mind has been expanded by a big idea, it will never go back to its original state. — Thomas Carlyle

Subsequent to the original Quicken, the whole idea that we, as a consumer products company, could actually make business products, that was a whole revolution in our thinking. — Scott Cook

My experience is that an original and compelling idea for a novel is a rare thing. — James Thayer

The first word Jesus used in His earthly ministry was repent. Repent means to change the way you've been conditioned to think, and I believe that is the only way we are going to see the impact of the original concepts and idea of God. — Myles Munroe

As Asian-Americans, the charge that is often lobbed against us is sort of the least original: the idea that somehow we're perpetual foreigners, that we can't be trusted, and that even my father, who was patriotic to the point that it was kind of a joke among his children, would be accused of being disloyal to America. — David Henry Hwang

Often, the idea that there can be a wide range of translations of one text doesn't occur to people - or that a translation could be bad, very bad, and unfaithful to the original. — Lydia Davis

The most successful people change the world not through sweat and tears but through ideas and passion. It is not a matter of hard work or time on the job; it is having a different view, an original idea, something that expresses their individuality and creativity. Success comes from thinking, then acting on those thoughts. — Richard Koch

Before I start carving the idea must be almost complete. I say 'almost' because the really important thing seems to be the sculptor's ability to let his intuition guide him over the gap between conception and realization without compromising the integrity of the original idea; the point being that the material has vitality - it resists and makes demands ... — Barbara Hepworth

But having had your bright, fresh, original idea, the really hard part is turning it into a successful product. That's what takes all the sweat. — Trevor Baylis

An Internet meme is a hijacking of the original idea. Instead of mutating by random change and spreading by a form of Darwinian selection, Internet memes are altered deliberately by human creativity. There is no attempt at accuracy of copying, as with genes - and as with memes in their original version. — Richard Dawkins

At every point in the story of the transmission of biblical material from the original text to today we are dealing with the interaction of men and women with God. At every point, human judgment and human fallibility are involved, as they are in every attempt we make today to act faithfully in new situations. The idea that at a certain point in this long story a line was drawn before which everything is divine word and after which everything is human judgment is absurd. — Lesslie Newbigin

Today, people tend to credit me with having the original idea and made the first circuits. — Jack Kilby

Don't equate activity with efficiency. You are paying your key people to see the big picture. Don't let them get bogged down in a lot of meaningless meetings and paper shuffling. Announce a Friday afternoon off once in a while. Cancel a Monday morning meeting or two. Tell the cast of characters you'd like them to spend the amount of time normally spent preparing for attending the meeting at their desks, simply thinking about an original idea. — Harvey MacKay

I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it - keep going, keep going come what may.
But what is your final goal, you may ask. That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely, much as the rough draught turns into a sketch, and the sketch into a painting through the serious work done on it, through the elaboration of the original vague idea and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought. — Vincent Van Gogh

The original AMD GCN architecture allowed for one source of graphics commands, and two sources of compute commands. For PS4, we've worked with AMD to increase the limit to 64 sources of compute commands - the idea is if you have some asynchronous compute you want to perform, you put commands in one of these 64 queues, and then there are multiple levels of arbitration in the hardware to determine what runs, how it runs, and when it runs, alongside the graphics that's in the system. — Mark Cerny

After the Volcker Fund collapsed, I got another grant from the Lilly Endowment to do a history of the U.S., which I worked on from 1962-66. The original idea was to take the regular facts and put a libertarian assessment on everything. — Murray Rothbard

Hemingway, damn his soul, makes everything he writes terrifically exciting (and incidentally makes all us second-raters seem positively adolescent) by the seemingly simple expedient of the iceberg principle - three-fourths of the substance under the surface. He comes closer that way to retaining the magic of the original, unexpressed idea or emotion, which is always more stirring than any words. But just try and do it! — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

I think some bands thrive on the idea of changing instruments. When they're off their real instrument, the ability to go very far from the original idea is reduced. — Tom Waits

I love the idea of a tiny window between the back stoop and the pantry, where the milkman would pass through the cheese. But of course, there is no milkman anymore. So somebody coming by the house and seeing the window would say, 'Oh, that must be original, because that's where the milkman passed the cheese through to the pantry.' — Chris Van Allsburg

Every original idea is first ridiculed, then vigorously attacked, and finally taken for granted. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Our metaphors for the operation of the brain are frequently drawn from the production line. We think of the brain as a glorified sausage machine, taking in information from the senses, processing it and regurgitating it in a different form, as thoughts or actions. The digital computer reinforces this idea because it is quite explicitly a machine that does to information what a sausage machine does to pork. Indeed, the brain was the original inspiration and metaphor for the development of the digital computer, and early computers were often described as 'giant brains'. Unfortunately, neuroscientists have sometimes turned this analogy on its head, and based their models of brain function on the workings of the digital computer (for example by assuming that memory is separate and distinct from processing, as it is in a computer). This makes the whole metaphor dangerously self-reinforcing. — Steve Grand

That's my problem with new-age stuff. In common with many irrational views it harks back to a sense of something ancient while rejecting anything provably historical. It's like the miserable concept of Original Sin. There seems to be an obsession with the idea that there were ancient humans, uncorrupted by their capricious intellects, who lived in the 'right way'.
They didn't eat too much dairy or any wheat. They didn't sit down too long for their spines or walk around in posture-ruining shoes. They didn't consume too many sugars or fats for their unblemished guts to digest, or pop painkilling and antibiotic tablets to deal with the short-term symptoms of long-term problems that should be dealt with by wholesale lifestyle change. They didn't drink or smoke. They were perfect and we should sling out all our stuff and emulate them. Except they had an average life expectancy of about 18 and the planet could only support a few hundred thousand of them. Apart from that, good plan. — David Mitchell

Don't worry about people stealing an idea," he once told a student. "If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats. — Walter Isaacson

In one of the extras that come with the DVD version of the movie (Groundhog Day), Danny Rubin, who came up with the original idea and then wrote the script, says that the movie is about "doing what you can do in the moment to make things better instead of making them worse." Which might not sound like very much, but it's just about all you can do in life.

Which only proves that the world itself runs on Yiddish-speaking principles: the best way to get what you want and make all those bastards out there so jealous that they'll want to poke their own eyes out is to go out of your way to be nice to those bastards. That's the way to show them. That's how a mentsh gets revenge. — Michael Wex

The idea of Curious Yellow, of surrender to a higher cause, seems to appeal to a certain small subset of humanity. These people manipulate the worm, customizing its payload to establish quisling dictatorships in its shadow, and the horrors these gauleiters invent in its service are far worse than the crude but direct tactics the original worm used. — Charles Stross

The problem with thinking up a new and original idea within a novel is that you have to make sure that Kurt Vonnegut did not already think of it. — Meena Kandasamy

Herder put forward the idea that each of us has an original way of being human. Each person has his or her own "measure" is his way of putting it. This idea has entered very deep into modern consciousness. It is also new. Before the late eighteenth century no one thought that the differences between human beings had this kind of moral significance. — Charles Taylor

Pictures artists staged their own images or copied or cut out others already in existence. The viewer took them in separately, in sometimes paradoxical waves: an original image, then the manipulations of it, then the places where image and idea intersected. This created a crucial perceptual glitch that irony and understanding filled. — Jerry Saltz

If we want a better original idea, we must generate our own before we screen others' suggestions. — Adam Grant

Look, I know you meant well creating the world and all, but how could you let it get away from you like this? How come you couldn't stick with your original idea of paradise? People's lives were a mess. — Sue Monk Kidd

as quickly as we can have a spiritual experience through doing good, our motives can shift in an instant. Sometimes our motives get shaped in directions that were not the original design. Am I loving people, or am I loving the idea of doing good? Do I desire the best for each person I come in contact with, or do I desire to feel the best about myself for the good I am doing? — Jeff Shinabarger

Success is creating something original and lasting-whether it is a company, a work of art, an idea or analysis that influence others, or a happy and productive family. — Linda Chavez

I'll think of the idea and then I'll write something down, then within that there will be a joke or two which is the original thing which I thought was funny. — David Cross

It's widely assumed that there's a tradeoff between quantity and quality - if you want to do better work, you have to do less of it - but this turns out to be false. In fact, when it comes to idea generation, quantity is the most predictable path to quality. "Original thinkers," Stanford professor Robert Sutton notes, "will come up with many ideas that are strange mutations, dead ends, and utter failures. The cost is worthwhile because they also generate a larger pool of ideas - especially novel ideas. — Adam M. Grant

Michael, Eleanor is without a doubt the most beautiful woman who has ever or will ever live. If you could take a nighttime thunderstorm and turn it into a woman, you would have a very good idea what she looks like. And a fairly good idea how she behaves as well. — Tiffany Reisz

Write it down. Not just to remember it, but to forget it in the right way. My notebook are a kind of materialized subconscious, a hard-copy memory and its invisible substrata, following their own rules. More than once I have been surprised to discover that an idea I thought was new and original, something I set down in a notebook yesterday, is already contained in another note from years before. Sometimes the second version repeats the first, almost word for word, across the space of a decade. The earlier version, once brought with clarity to the surface, has been covered over again by layers of yellowing paper. — Ivan Vladislavic

I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be an humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this, his almost chosen people, for perpetuating the object of that great struggle. — Abraham Lincoln

I love being directed. Because it's another thought, it's another fresh idea. You're so grateful for an original idea that you haven't had. — Diana Rigg

I don't think anybody came into the movie business to be unoriginal and plagiarising and not having an original idea in their brain. — Jeremy Thomas

The pace of change for entrepreneurs is rapidly accelerating, and the cost and risk of launching a new business and getting off the ground is just amazing. The ability to gain user feedback really quickly and adapt to what your consumers want is totally different with the web as it is now. But finding a new market, helping people and taking that original idea and turning it into a business is really exciting right now. — Matt Mickiewicz

Somewhere along the way, the idea, which I think was initially to get some fair transaction between people, went out the window. And what came in was, the most you can get and the least you can give. That's why cars are the way they are nowadays. It's just an erosion of all the things that were true and right about the original idea. — Bruce Springsteen

Usually the audience has no idea that the censored version of whatever movie they're watching isn't the original. — Todd Solondz

I've always been open to the idea of an adaptation that does its own thing, that freely diverges from the original as long as it's true to the spirit. — Bryan Lee O'Malley

All my pictures are a kind of revision of my original idea. This is surely very different from the way in which Japanese or Chinese artists work: their themes are pre-ordained, whereas mine are invented at will. — Antoni Tapies

It is the link between satisfaction and redress
the idea that a satisfaction scene, whatever else it is, is a revenge tragedy
that I want to pursue; and the sense that we waylay our desire
make it literally unreal
with pictures of its satisfaction. Pornography, for example, can easily be used, among many other things, to pre-empt the elaboration of erotic fantasy; it can be, in Masud Kahn's words, 'the stealer of dreams'. To put it in old-fashioned Freudian language, fantasies of satisfaction are defences against desiring, the attempt in fantasy to take the risk out of desire; or to put it in more Kleinian language, fantasies of satisfaction are attacks upon desire; they are, in fact, against desiring, both up against it and in opposition to it. Our fantasies of satisfaction are clues to our fears about desiring. Wishful fantasies are the original sins of omission. — Adam Phillips

It perhaps has a chance, a commercial chance, this film. It's funny, it's charming, the idea is original, it's unusual and it makes fun of the movie industry in a way that it needs to be poked fun at. — Mark Rydell

Anticipatory plagiarism occurs when someone steals your original idea and publishes it a hundred years before you were born. — Robert K. Merton

Everybody's idea of a great book is different, of course. For me it's one that makes my jaw drop on every page, the writing is so original. — Carl Hiaasen

The doctrine of Original Sin is the most democratizing idea in all of human history. — Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

The concept of God as a loving, all-powerful person, who created us, who has a plan for us, who issues commandments, and who is ready to receive us into Heaven, is a substantial concept, rich in meaning and significance for human life. But if we take away all this, and leave only the idea of an original cause, it is questionable whether the same word should even be used. By keeping the original word, we delude ourselves into thinking that we are talking about the same thing. — James Rachels

The fact is that one new idea leads to another, that to a third and so on through a course of time, until someone, with whom no one of these ideas was original, combines all together, and produces what is justly called a new invention. — Thomas Jefferson

Ideas are cheap and plentiful. The original pitch idea is such a small part of a business that it's almost negligible. The real question is how well you execute. — Jason Fried

Didn't anyone ever teach you why it's a bad idea to make assumptions?"
He raises his eyebrows, waiting for an answer.
Oh, dear God. Does he really think that joke is original or witty?
"It makes an ass out of you and me."
"I see you're both smart and pretty." He laughs and settles into another smile.
That's the one he thinks is sexy. The smile he practices in the mirror. — Rysa Walker

The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity. — Eric Hoffer

The original idea was to make it easy to publish content on the Web and find an audience. What we learned from publishers is that the thing they want the most is more readers and more revenue. — Trip Adler

Everybody has an idea of the kind of society they'd like to live in, and I would like to live in one where our senior politicians were spirited and original and possibly even good at what they do. — Andrew O'Hagan

It" is the idea of him or her that resides in us--inspired by the "Something" in them, as Pope has it, "That gives us back the Image of our Mind." Although the perception of It must be excited by some extraordinary perturbation in the looks and personality of the adored, the aura that It broadcasts arises not merely from the singularity of an original, as Walter Benjamin supposed, but also from the fabulous success of its reproducibility in the imaginations of many others, charmed exponentially by the number of its copies. The one-of-kind item must become a type, a replicable role-icon of itself--from "a Charles Hart" or "a Nell Gwyn" to "a Mary Pickford" or "a Douglas Fairbanks"--in order to unleash the Pygmalion effect in the hearts and minds of the fans, making the idea of him or her theirs--as much or more than anything else they might call their own. — Joseph Roach

The original languages didn't even have he and she. They didn't have concepts of masculine and feminine. People were people. And the whole idea was that we were in a circle together, not in a hierarchy together. — Gloria Steinem

An idea you have might not be original. But by creating a novel out of that idea you can make it original. — Umberto Eco

I am really interested in who owns ideas of religion. What if I say I'm a libertarian, socialist, Occupy-supporting, anti-war, Christian? Is that a controversial idea? I don't see anything really in the original semiotics of Christianity, in the specific parable of the radical socialist Jew from Galilee who becomes the hero figure in the Homeric-word-of-mouth-gossip-novel that becomes the Bible that should make that a paradox. — Robert Montgomery

The best work comes from people who are motivated by crisis. When something stops their original idea, they respond by coming up with something even better. — Pharrell Williams

Writing is much more satisfying on a certain level than acting ever was. Because you're not interpreting someone else's original idea, you can come up with your own. — Michael Beck

[Liv Corfixen] very much part of my life in that she's everything in my life and we found a way to use each other much more on a creative level as well. She was kind of the idea for this movie so I wanted to acknowledge that. She gave me the original idea to make the film. — Nicolas Winding Refn

Annie: Maybe you all do. It's my idea of the original sin.
James: What is?
Annie: Giving up. — William Gibson

Knowledge comes through likeness. And so because the soul may know everything, it is never at rest until it comes to the original idea, in which all things are one. And there it comes to rest in God. — Meister Eckhart

The original idea before Mint was a life and goal planning system I called Carpe Viva. The idea was that all of life's goals, from buying a house, getting an MBA, or learning Spanish could be quantified in both time and money. — Aaron Patzer

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

John Carpenter created the idea of Halloween, so his vision remains the most focused and intelligently directed of the series. The directors that have followed have kept the original intent of the concept. — Donald Pleasence

My original idea for the cover was better - decapitate Paul - but he wouldn't go along with it. — John Lennon

The original and brilliant idea of an MBA was the opportunity for students to study the theory and application of business and management principles. — Warren Bennis

The Levantine political idea, which grew naturally among the communities of the eastern Mediterranean, was an original way of dealing with diverse tribal, village, and sectarian identities, and it inspired the Beirutis and ultimately the Lebanese to believe that they could build a modern Arab republic, melding together seventeen different Christian, Muslim, and Druse sects. — Thomas L. Friedman

By the time I actually recorded Bitter Tears I carried a heavy load of sadness and outrage; I felt every word of those songs ... I expected there to be trouble with that album, and there was ... when it was released, many radio stations wouldn't play it ... The very idea of unconventional or even original ideas ending up on "country" radio in the late 1990s is absurd. — Johnny Cash

It's not really an original idea, but there's something that goes along with power and celebrity that starts to make you feel like you're impervious to certain forces that the rest of us have to live with. — Jonathan Dee

Writing is the basis of all, because creating something that didn't even exist before is like taking an empty canvass. It is a wonderful thing to make something out of nothing. You've got an empty page, you've got an idea, and then you start typing and that is the most thrilling thing of all. And then if it becomes a movie or something else that's a plus, but the original writing of it is what's very exciting. — Carl Reiner

There is good and bad in all of us and the Church uses the idea of original sin to control us by saying that, if we do not obey the bishops, we will rot in Hell. — Tony Benn

Sometime during the 1990s, when I was teaching philosophy at UCSD, my friend, colleague, and music teacher, Carol Plantamura, discussed the possibility of teaching a course together looking at ways in which various literary works (plays, stories, novels) had been treated as operas, and how different themes emerged in the opera and in its original. One of the pairings we planned to use was Mann's great novella and Britten's opera. Unfortunately, the course was never taught, but the idea remained with me. — Philip Kitcher

Q. Your original, self-published version of The Martian became a phenomenon online. Were you expecting the overwhelmingly positive reception the book received? A. I had no idea it was going to do so well. The story had been available for free on my website for months, and I assumed anyone who wanted to read it had already read it. A few readers had requested I post a Kindle version because it's easier to download that way. So I went ahead and did it, setting the price to the minimum Amazon would allow. As it sold more and more copies I just watched in awe. — Andy Weir

Theosophists for instance will preach an obviously attractive idea like re-incarnation; but if we wait for its logical results, they are spiritual superciliousness and the cruelty of caste. For if a man is a beggar by his own pre-natal sins, people will tend to despise the beggar. But Christianity preaches an obviously unattractive idea, such as original sin; but when we wait for its results, they are pathos and brotherhood, and a thunder of laughter and pity; for only with original sin we can at once pity the beggar and distrust the king. — G.K. Chesterton

I often wonder why people remake movies. Is there just a lack of imagination out there that they can't come up with an original idea? — Michael Beck

Even as entrepreneurs, we rely on people to get things done. We may have the original idea, but moving it forward can involve hundreds of people. Every person becomes integral to the overall success. — Donald J. Trump

Harvey never had an original idea or thought in his life. I was out wandering around the country doing charity benefits, mainly, when I asked him to come along. — Tim Conway

What is it to know a variety of languages, but merely to have a variety of sounds express the same idea? Original thought is ore of the mind; language is but the stamp and coinage by which it is put into circulation. — Washington Irving

Basically, the UBR is a relic of an earlier vision for UDDI. The original vision for UDDI was as a standard that would help companies conduct business with each other in an automated fashion. The idea was that companies could publish how they wanted to interact, and other companies could find that information and use it to establish a relationship. — Michael Bloomberg