Quotes & Sayings About Original Ideas

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

I am not a speaker nor a preacher. I have no mission to change the world. I have no original words or teaching to give anyone. I reflect only what I've seen and heard - most ordinary, very common. I have no fascination for fresh ideas and activity. All enthusiasm for worldly endeavours and strivings have all but gone. For me, thoughts, words and deeds- the activities of life, are merely the utensils for serving out the 'prasad' of the Being-ness. — Mooji

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

Most "original" ideas aren't completely original, but instead are the result of two basic methods for generating ideas: problems in search of solutions and solutions in search of problems. — Barry Nalebuff

Many of the most popular children's stories have their roots in tales invented for particular children, and this casual, often serendipitous, approach produces a stream of ideas which are later refined into great literature. With Tolkien's shorter stories and poems, I am even more aware of the presence of the author, and his children. There are elements and events that are so strikingly original that they could only arise as a result of observations and conversations ignited by two or more lively minds. — Alan Lee

Essayists must not only be succinct but have original ideas and, even harder to come by, or to fake, likable voices. Consciously or not, they endeavor to win us over by charm. If an essayist can not only charm but write the unforgettable sentence, one that reveals the heart in a few words, I'm her slave. — Cyra McFadden

No Ideas original - there is nothing new under the sun ... — Nas

Inevitably even the most original new ideas will eventually harden into dogma or stop working for everybody. — Elizabeth Gilbert

A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. — Freeman Dyson

I've learned mainly by reading myself. So I don't think I have any original ideas. Certainly, I talk about reading Graham. I've read Phil Fisher. So I've gotten a lot of my ideas from reading. You can learn a lot from other people. In fact, I think if you learn basically from other people, you don't have to get too many new ideas on your own. You can just apply the best of what you see. — Warren Buffett

Originality is the only thing that counts. But the originator uses material and ideas that occur round him and pass through him. And out of his experience comes the original creation. — George Gershwin

Moreover, I believe that part of America's genius has always been its ability to absorb newcomers, to forge a national identity out of the disparate lot that arrived on our shores. In this we've been aided by a Constitution that
despite being marred by the original sin of slavery
has at its very core the ideas of equal citizenship under the laws; and an economic system that, more than any other, has offered opportunity to all comers, regardless of status or title or rank. — Barack Obama

Let us call this quality the Original Mind. This mind looked at the world more directly - not through words and received ideas. It was flexible and receptive to new information. Retaining a memory of this Original Mind, we cannot help but feel nostalgia for the intensity with which we used to experience the world. As the years pass, this intensity inevitably diminishes. We come to see the world through a screen of words and opinions; our prior experiences, layered over the present, color what we see. We no longer look at things as they are, noticing their details, or wonder why they exist. Our minds gradually tighten up. We become defensive about the world we now take for granted, and we become upset if our beliefs or assumptions are attacked. — Robert Greene

The emphasis and value on ideas and original thinking is an innate part of British culture, and in many ways, that describes the traditions of design. — Jonathan Ive

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

Keep it simple. Trust your imagination. Discover what is unique about your imagination. Don't simply read a story and copy it.
I go into myself. Then I transcribe what visions I have. If those ideas are original, and you are devoted, you will go far. — Clive Barker

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

But I owe something to Vincent, and that is, in the consciousness of having been useful to him, the confirmation of my own original ideas about painting. And also, at difficult moments, the remembrance that one finds others unhappier than oneself. — Paul Gauguin

As Duke Ellington put it, Henderson "was liberal in giving away his ideas to people. So liberal, in fact, that it is difficult to recognize the original Fletcher Henderson through his flock of imitators."3 — Jeffrey Magee

What I want to do is try to raise the level of SCI-Arc's original mission, which was to be forward-thinking. And let's face it, if you're forward-thinking and you're dealing in concepts of new ideas, history has told us that new ideas are not always wanted by everyone. — Neil Denari

Him & Her are born directly from the ideas behind the Panton Chair. An evolution of the hermaphroditic original, declined into the harmony of the two sexes. They assume sculpted forms like naked models of seduction ... but they feel no shame. — Fabio Novembre

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

'Original Sin' is one of those ideas that has been circulating for several years at the Marvel retreats we have a couple times a year. We have all these ideas floating around for a bit before we figure out how to align them. — Jason Aaron

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

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

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

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

Only very few men have the gift of thinking new and original ideas and of changing the traditional body of creeds and doctrines. — Ludwig Von Mises

I don't know if there's a problem with original ideas ... I think a healthy film industry should have a good supply of good, original writing. — Colin Firth

I haven't come across any recent new ideas in film that strike me as being particularly important and that have to do with form. I think that a preoccupation with originality of form is more or less a fruitless thing. A truly original person with a truly original mind will not be able to function in the old form and will simply do something different. Others had much better think of the form as being some sort of classical tradition and try to work within it. — Stanley Kubrick

Halsted's "cancer storehouse" grew far beyond its original walls at Hopkins. His ideas entered oncology, then permeated its vocabulary, then its psychology, its ethos, and its self-image. When radical surgery fell, an entire culture of surgery thus collapsed with it. The radical mastectomy is rarely, if ever, performed by surgeons today. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Only simple ideas can be held by large groups of people. Commonly held ideas are almost always dumbed down until they are practically lies ... and often dangerous ones. Once vast numbers of people have come to believe the lie, they adjust their own behavior to bring themselves into sync with it, and thereby change the world itself. The world, then, no longer resembles the one that gave rise to the original insight. Soon, a person's situation is so at odds with the world as it really is that a crisis develops, and he or she must seek a new metaphor for explanation and guidance. — Bill Bonner

Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else. What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat ... where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches. — Ursula K. Le Guin

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

[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

A book is not only written - after it's finished it starts writing you, the writer. You become its notebook, its sheet of paper on which it forces you to think and rethink your original ideas, your topics, your research, actually everything. — Sasa Stanisic

This modern interpretation of Machiavelli's landmark work is perhaps more useful for the modern reader than the original text. His dense ideas have been boiled down to their essence and presented in language that can be easily grasped by the modern mind. — Brandon Musk

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

A book written within, contains ideas and thoughts from all over, where each page explains itself. — Auliq Ice

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

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

The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products. — Steve Jobs

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

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

We always worry that we are copying someone else, that we don't have our own style. Don't worry. Writing is a communal act. Contrary to popular belief, a writer is not Prometheus alone on a hill full of fire. We are very arrogant to think we alone have a totally original mind. We are carried on the backs of all the writers who came before us. We live in the present with all the history, ideas, and soda pop of this time. It all gets mixed up in our writing. — Natalie Goldberg

Just because it's something original, eccentric or you're not used to it; doesn't mean it's wrong. — Sandra Chami Kassis

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

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

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

Some of the best inventive moments are born out of 'wrong thinking'. Most people start with the right way so they all follow the same path. The wrong way will lead to mistakes from which you can learn and create new discoveries-the kind of original ideas that come to life when we dare to be different, keep an open mind, and have no fear of failure. — James Dyson

Ideas are infinite, original, and lively divine thoughts. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

It is almost as if ideas set in mathematical form melt and become liquid and just as rivers can, from the most humble beginnings, flow for thousands of miles, through the most varied topography bringing nourishment and life with them wherever they go, so too can ideas cast in mathematical form flow far from their original sources, along well-defined paths, electrifying and dramatically affecting much of what they touch. pp. xii - xiii. — G. Arnell Williams

Food Throwers: Begun usually by estranged couples, once this victual flinging starts, everyone will do it ... Should your dinner party have become an out of control concussion match with opponents catapulting croutons and petits pois across the mahogany, don't fight it, go with it. And when you have the desire to quell the uprising approach the original perpetrator from behind. There, slowly crown her with the contents of the fresh fruit salad bowl. But be warned. Although this immobilizes and rivits everyone's attention it also gives them new ideas. — J.P. Donleavy

How could those who wrote the Constitution possibly understand its meaning better than those who had the experience of observing and participating in its operation? It is one thing to rail against the evils of politically unaccountable judges enlarging constitutional rights beyond the ideas and purposes of their adopters; another to explain why morally sustainable claims of equality be held captive to the extraordinary obstacles of Article V or subject to the partial and incomplete understandings of 1789 or 1868. — Jack N. Rakove

Couture has copied my things for years, in addition to countless other costume designers, claiming theirs were the original ideas. It's all part of the business, unfortunately. — Edith Head

The creative process requires more than reason. Most original thinking isn't even verbal. It requires 'a groping experimentation with ideas, governed by intuitive hunches and inspired by the unconscious.' The majority of business men are incapable of original thinking because they are unable to escape from the tyranny of reason. Their imaginations are blocked. — David Ogilvy

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

The journey of the hero is about the courage to seek the depths; the image of creative rebirth; the eternal cycle of change within us; the uncanny discovery that the seeker is the mystery which the seeker seeks to know. The hero journey is a symbol that binds, in the original sense of the word, two distant ideas, the spiritual quest of the ancients with the modern search for identity, always the one, shape-shifting yet marvelously constant story that we find. — Phil Cousineau

Ideas are never original," Kelsier said. "Only one thing is."
"And what is that?
"Style," Kelsier said.
Then he punched Ruin across the face. — Brandon Sanderson

Choice, not chance, determines your destiny. It's up to you to decide what you are worth, how you matter, and how you make meaning in the world. No one else has your gifts
your set of talents, ideas, interests. You are an original. A masterpiece. — Regina Brett

...some of the most important work that we can do as scholars may more closely resemble contemporary editorial or curatorial practices, bringing together, highlighting and remixing significant ideas in existing texts than remaining solely focused on the production of more ostensibly original texts. — Kathleen Fitzpatrick

It's important to respect and exhaustively study the masters of music, but as you grow and develop it's important to use their discoveries, not as a final destination but as a catalyst for your original ideas. — Carl Orr

It would be really great if someone would invent a new Internet with the specific purpose of not making money off of it, but making it what it originally was, a free marketplace of ideas, and there are still aspects of the Internet that are that. Wikipedia, essentially, is still the bastion of the original ideals of the Internet. — Todd Rundgren

Great ideas often have no reference points.
We have nothing to compare them to. They are original, and awkward. And so they are the most vulnerable to people trying to kill them. They do not conform to what exists, so they challenge us. — David Hieatt

The Mirror Empire is the most original fantasy I've read in a long time, set in a world full of new ideas, expanding the horizons of the genre. A complex and intricate book full of elegant ideas and finely-drawn characters. — Adrian Tchaikovsky

What I'm saying is individuals have better ideas if they're connected to rich, diverse networks of other individuals. If you put yourself in an environment with lots of different perspectives, you yourself are going to have better, sharper, more original ideas. It's not that the network is smart. — Steven Johnson

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

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

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

The beauty of ideas is that they are like waves in the ocean and they connect with things that came before them, and I think it is very important to embrace things that interest you and influence you, and incorporate them into what you do, as all artists have always done. The ones that say they don't, are lying. Or are afraid that their work won't be seen as being original, somehow. — Jim Jarmusch

People have always said that I could have been a highly successful pop artist, if only that were my intention. It never was. My original intention was to be a kind of behind-the-scenes participant in music, to just be a record producer and engineer. And I made a record for myself just so I could have an outlet for my musical ideas. — Todd Rundgren

As for borrowing Mr. Whistler's ideas about art, the only thoroughly original ideas I have heard him express have had reference to his own superiority as a painter over painters greater than himself. — Oscar Wilde

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

Oh Cecelia, you would have loved my grandmother, Miz Goodpepper said, dunking a cookie into her wine. She was so alive and full of original ideas, especially for that era. While other women were busy being proper, she was busy cultivating her spirit. — Beth Hoffman

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

Our Government is fostering economic growth in Kitchener, Cambridge and all of the Waterloo Region by investing in our innovative businesses. Today's announcement is a great example of how we are helping high-potential companies bring great ideas to market faster. Helping our entrepreneurs and original thinkers export their products and services to the rest of the world creates jobs, growth and economic prosperity here at home. — Gary Goodyear

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

The shortcomings of economics are not original error but uncorrected obsolescence. The obsolescence has occurred because what is convenient has become sacrosanct. Anyone who attacks such ideas must seem to be a trifle self-confident and even aggressive. The man who makes his entry by leaning against an infirm door gets an unjustified reputation for violence. Something is to be attributed to the poor state of the door. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The ideas of an age are most abundant where they are not crowded by original ideas. — Franz Grillparzer

Humanists were people who wanted to return to ideas found in old Greek and Latin writing of Greece and Rome, written many centuries earlier. Christian Humanists also wanted to get back to these ideas, but they were mainly concerned with learning about the early Christian Church, before it had become involved with money-making and superstition. They wanted to read the books of the early Church, especially the gospels of Christ, in the original language of Greek, so that they would know exactly what the writings meant. The leader of the Christian Humanists was Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), who attacked superstitions in the Catholic Church in his writing. — Michael A. Mullett

The reason the art world doesn't respond to Kinkade is because none - not one - of his ideas about subject-matter, surface, color, composition, touch, scale, form, or skill is remotely original. They're all cliche and already told. — Jerry Saltz

Some people, especially literary people, they think, 'I'll write this original script, and it will be full of ideas. I'll submit it, and they'll hire me for television.' That's not the case. — Maria Semple

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

We now live in a world both in film and television where everything is based on something. You point out, "Star Wars" was an original screenplay, "Raiders of the Lost Ark," an original screenplay, "Ghostbusters" an original screenplay, "Back to the Future." All these things that people love were original ideas many years ago. — Alfred Gough

Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. It is a process; it's not random. — Ken Robinson

I do think that at a certain point, the reboot sequel mode has to give way to original ideas and back to a place where, you know, films are, you know, a medium and the cinema is a place you go to see something that is, you know, wholly new. — J.J. Abrams

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

Really good original ideas are very hard to come up with. Good ideas - easy. Really good, original ideas - it can take months. — Nicholas Sparks

Teachers should not fear going off plan if a better learning opportunity presents itself. Plans are plans, but children are living, breathing, creative people, who deserve to have their questions answered and original ideas explored. — Adele Devine

The interlocking network of stalks and branches and creepers was skeletal, the fossil yard of an extinct species of fineboned insectoid creatures. all of these bones, then, seemed to have been stained by sun and earth from an original living white to brown, and not the tough fibrous flower and seed-spilling green they actually once had been. Howard wondered about a man who had never seen summer, a winter man, examining the weeds and making this inference
that he was looking at an ossuary. the man would take that as true and base his ideas of the world on that mistake. — Paul Harding

Pavel Durov only knows how to copy great products like Facebook and 'WhatsApp'; he never had and will never have original ideas. — Jan Koum

Men want to be reminded, who do not want to be taught; because those original ideas of rectitude to which the mind is compelled to assent when they are proposed, are not always as present to us as they ought to be. — Edmund Burke

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

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

Creativity is the ability to produce ideas that are both original and valuable. — Gerard Puccio

I try to seek out and surround myself with people who just percolate fresh, original, and creative ideas. — Martha Stewart

My advice to female directors is not to wait until you feel like your ideas have been pre-certified or until you think you've gotten some approval for them. Then it's too late! Follow your gut. That's hard to do, but the only way to be original. — Abigail Disney

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

The books of the great scientists are gathering dust on the shelves of learned libraries ... While the artist's communication is linked forever with its original form, that of the scientist is modified, amplified, fused with the ideas and results of others and melts into the stream of knowledge and ideas which forms our culture. The scientist has in common with the artist only this: that he can find no better retreat from the world than his work and also no stronger link with the world than his work. — Max Delbruck

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