Thoughts on ideas

Published: Nov 12, 2021 11:26:42 AM IST
Updated: Nov 12, 2021 11:34:29 AM IST

Image: David Crotty / Patrick MCmullan via Getty Images

Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas.

—Donatella Versace

Italian fashion designer

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

—Oscar Wilde

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Irish poet and playwright

Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.

—Marie Curie

Polish and French physicist and chemist

No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.

—Victor Hugo

French poet and novelist

If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.

—Peter Drucker

Austrian-American educator

If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.

—Alfred Nobel

Swedish scientist

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

—John Steinbeck

American author

The test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

—F Scott Fitzgerald

American novelist

Ideas shape the course

of history.

—John Maynard Keynes

English economist

I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.

—John Cage

American composer

The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.

—David Ogilvy

British advertising tycoon

Men are mortal. So are ideas. An idea needs propagation as much as a plant needs watering. Otherwise both will wither and die.

—BR Ambedkar

Jurist and economist

(This story appears in the 05 November, 2021 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)

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