The document contains 55 quotes about ideas from various notable figures. Many of the quotes discuss how ideas can transform over time from vague notions to fully formed concepts that are acted upon. Several quotes note that implementing an idea is often very different from its initial conception, and that truly innovative ideas may face resistance before gaining acceptance. The collection as a whole emphasizes the power of ideas to influence individuals and society.

1. 55 Ideas on Ideas

2. 55 Ideas on Ideas

3. 55 Ideas on Ideas

4. “ No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit” Sir Frederick G. Banting (1891 - 1941)

5. “ An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come” Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885)

6. “ I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it” Samuel Goldwyn (1882 - 1974)

7. “ Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen” John Steinbeck (1902 - 1968)

8. “ I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones” John Cage (1912 - 1992)

9. “ When ideas fail, words come in very handy” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)

10. “ Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats” Howard Aiken (1900 - 1973)

11. “ An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it” Don Marquis

12. “ No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man” H. L. Mencken

13. “ The value of an idea lies in the using of it” Thomas A. Edison

14. “ To have a great idea, have a lot of them” Thomas A. Edison

15. “ It's the right idea, but not the right time” John Dalton

16. “ I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else” Pablo Picasso

17. “ You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea” Pablo Picasso

18. “ You can kill a man but you can't kill an idea” Medgar Evers

19. “ A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on” John F. Kennedy

20. “ There's no good idea that can't be improved on” Michael Eisner

21. “ A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds” Mark Twain

22. “ An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all” Oscar Wilde

23. “ We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us” Friedrich Nietzsche

24. “ A real idea keeps changing and appears in many places” Mason Cooley

25. “ Acting on a good idea is better than just having a good idea” Robert Half

26. “ Everything begins with an idea” Earl Nightingale

27. “ No idea is isolated, but is only what it is among all ideas” Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

28. “ All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you can not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change” Gilbert K. Chesterton

29. “ Right now it's only a notion, but I think I can get the money to make it into a concept, and later turn it into an idea” Woody Allen

30. “ An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself” Charles Dickens

31. “ The history of the changes produced by a universal idea is not a history of changes in the individual, but of changes brought about by the successive efforts of millions of individuals in the course of many generations” Lafcadio Hearn

32. “ An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought” Pablo Picasso

33. “ Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice” Sydney J. Harris

34. “ If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it” Charles Kettering

35. “ Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervor, live for it, and if need be, die for it” Alfred North Whitehead

36. “ The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea” Thomas Mann

37. “ Nearly everyone who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That's not the place to become discouraged” Thomas A. Edison

38. “ My idea of a writer: someone interested in everything” Susan Sontag

39. “ The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas” Linus Pauling

40. “ No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there” F. Scott Fitzgerald

41. “ A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it” Marcel Proust

42. “ Ideas must be put to the test. That's why we make things, otherwise they would be no more than ideas. There is often a huge difference between an idea and its realisation” Andy Goldsworthy

43. “ There is often a huge difference between an idea and its realisation. I've had what I thought were great ideas that just didn't work” Andy Goldsworthy

44. “ The ability to express an idea is well nigh as important as the idea itself” Bernard Baruch

45. “ Everyone who's ever taken a shower has an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference” Nolan Bushnell

46. “ Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds” Albert Einstein

47. “ Ideas are great arrows, but there has to be a bow” Bill Moyers

48. “ If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas” George Bernard Shaw

49. “ For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned” George Santayana

50. “ Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world” Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

51. “ Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won” Ralph Waldo Emerson

52. “ Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own” Sydney J Harris

53. “ You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created” Albert Einstein

54. “ The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift” Albert Einstein

55. “ Only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts” Albert Einstein

56. “ It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science” Carl Sagan

57. “ Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way” Williams James

58. “ New ideas fail because they are new and unknown, old ideas fail because they are old and too well known” Ricardo Sosa

59. Images: Creative Commons-licensed content http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/