To swear off making mistakes is very easy. All we have to do is swear off having ideas.— Leo Burnett
Get a good idea and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it’s done, and done right.— Walt Disney
Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity.— Louis Pasteur
One idea leads to another. The teapot led Fulton to the steam engine, which led to the gas combustion engine, which led to the rocket propulsion system, which took us to the moon and back. — Trust Your Crazy Ideas
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.— Isaac Newton
Ideas build on ideas. The primitive wheel, lever, awl, pulley, diode and transistor built on each other to become the modern computer.— Dan Zadra
Originality is not just doing something no one else has ever done, but doing what has been done countless times with new life, new breath.— Marie Chaplan
To put something in the world that was not there before, you have to be able to see that which others before you have overlooked.— George Vaillant
Only the most foolish of mice would hide in a cat’s ear. But only the wisest of cats would think to look there.— Scott Love
Did you know that right and left shoes were thought up only a little more than a century ago?— Bernice Fitz-Gibbon
The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new lands, but in seeing the world with fresh eyes.— Marcel Proust
Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought.— A. Szent-Gyorgi
Make your plans as fantastic as you like because 25 years from now they will seem mediocre. Make your plans 10 times as great as you first planned, and 25 years from now you will wonder why did not make them 50 times as great.— Henry Curtis
We will build a motor car for the great multitude. It will be so low in price that no man making a good wage will be unable to own one.— Henry Ford
We all love big ideas. If a company lacks enthusiasm, if the people are bored, it’s time for a big idea to rally around.— Mark David
Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir your blood. Make big plans. Aim high in work and life.— Daniel Hudson Burnham
Set your sights high, the higher the better. Expect the most wonderful things to happen, not in the future, but right now.— Eileen Caddy
Back of ninety-nine out of 100 assertions that a thing cannot be done is nothing but the unwillingness to do it.— William Feather
Never tell someone that something can’t be done. God may have waited centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing.— J.R. Holmes
It can be lucky for you if you don’t know a thing can’t be done so you can proceed blithely.— Alfred Hitchcock
At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done – then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done long ago.— Frances H. Burnett
Just 18 months before the Wright Brothers flew at Kittyhawk, a renowned British scientist named Simon Newcomb proved that heavier-than-air flight was ‘impossible’.— Beware of the Experts
Not only have I broken all the rules I learned about – I have broken rules I didn’t even know existed.— Martin Scorsese
The best leaders are apt to be found among those who have a strong component of unorthodoxy in their character. Instead of resisting innovation, they symbolize it.— David Ogilvy
To each of us, there come opportunities to rearrange our formulas and assumptions — not necessarily to be rid of the old, but more to profit from adding something new .— Leo Buscaglia
Don’t be confined by reality or precedent. Think about what could be accomplished if there were no boundaries. — James Fantus
Creative thinking may simply mean the realization that there’s no particular virtue in doing things the way they have always been done.— Rudolph Flesch
Dissatisfaction is the basis of progress. When we become satisfied, we become obsolete.— J. Willard Marriott, Jr.
I hope the day will never come when the American nation will be the champion of the status quo.— John Foster Dulles
The most damaging phrase in the English language is: “We’ve always done it this way”.— Admiral Grace Hopper
Whoever invented the first wheel was smart. Whoever invented the other three was a genius.— Sid Caesar
Many of my best inventions came from taking the creative but misdirected ideas of others and making them work.— Thomas Edison
There’s no shortage of remarkable ideas, what’s missing is the will to follow them through to reality.— Seth Godin
The innovator is that creative maverick who is willing to do whatever it takes to make the great idea a working reality.— Michael Leboeuf
We can do more than imagine, we can create. We can do more than create, we can innovate.— Vince Pfaff
Those who dream by night awake to find it was vanity. But the dreamers of day are dangerous; they may act out their dreams with open eyes to make them possible.— T.E. Lawrence
The world needs dreamers, and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do.— Sara Ban Breathnach
Someone scribbles a wild idea on the back of a napkin. Or dreams an impossible dream over coffee at their kitchen table. This is exactly how many of the world’s most successful ideas and enterprises still get their start.— Trust Your Crazy Ideas
Great deeds and great thoughts often have a ridiculous beginning. The ideas for great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant’s revolving door.— Albert Camus
Your dreams are not meant to put you to sleep, but to alert and arouse you to your immense possibilities.— David Phillips
Every day, thousands of ideas, impulses, hunches and intuitions race through your brain. Some are pure genius. Give them the red light long enough to at least write them down.— Ralph Ford
A hunch is a creativity trying to tell you something. It’s the voice of invention calling you forward.— Frank Capra
We should see dreaming as one of our responsibilities, rather than an alternative to one.— Mary Engelbreit
The people who dream are very often the people who see, and dreaming and seeing precede doing.— Margaret E. Sangster
Anyone can look for fashion in a boutique or history in a museum. The creative explorer looks for history in a hardware store and fashion in an airport.— Robert S. Weider
A good explorer knows that looking for ideas is like prospecting for gold. If you look in the same old places as everyone else, you’ll find tapped-out veins.— Roger Von Oech
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
The best leaders are not interested in promoting their own ideas, but in finding the best ideas. They are not interested in having their own way, but in finding the best way.— Dan Zadra
Leadership today is less about what we know and more about what we’re willing to discover.— Diane Branson
If the future is to remain open and free, we have to have people who can tolerate the unknown, who will not need the support of worked-out systems, whether they be traditional ones from the past or blueprints of the future. — Margaret Mead
Today’s leader must have the spirit of adventure – the pioneer spirit which blazes new trails.— Mary Parker Follett
Every company needs torchbearers. These are the people who embrace new ideas and champion the charge to have them implemented. — Rob Gilbert
Pioneers are special people. ‘First’ is always difficult. We don’t know that things can be done, that dreams can be fulfilled, that great accomplishments can be realized until somebody takes that first step.— Geraldine Neckiman
A frontier is never just a place; it is a time and a way of life. Frontiers pass, but they endure in their people. — Hal Borland
The principal mark of genius is not perfection, but originality, the opening of new frontiers.— Arthur Koestler
Bring in lots of crazy-sounding ideas and entertain them royally. One of them may be king.— Craig Dunn
Write down one idea every day. In six months you’ll have more ideas than most people have in a lifetime.— Breakthrough Strategies
Ideas are like little fish. Throw thousands out in the water. Only a handful will survive, but that is enough.— Unknown
The entrepreneur finds a need and fills it; the innovator anticipates or creates a need and fills it.— Denis Waitley
Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will.— George Bernard Shaw
The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource, adding color and suspense to all our lives.
— Daniel J. Boorstin
If you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.
— Alice Walker
Just think of something that would be wonderful if it were only possible – and then set out to make it possible.
— Armand Hammer
To be human is to be creative. You don’t have to go outside yourself to find creativity – you already have it. It lives in your heart and mind in every moment of every day.
— Sandra Magasandra
The common gift of humanity is that we are all hard-wired to solve problems by creating new solutions.
— John P. Kotter