Top 100 Big Ideas Quotes
#1. The American people ... want change. They want big ideas, big reform.
Rahm Emanuel
#3. When we know why we're here as individuals and leaders, when our people know why they're here, a sense of purpose carries us forward, and we can do what needs to be done. People want to work on big ideas that matter to them and make a difference. When they do, they find gold.
Howard Behar
#4. I saw a Shakespeare play when I was - I guess I was in junior high. And I just fell in love with the theater because, for me, it was a combination of big ideas and feeling.
Annette Bening
#5. I want big ideas to have aesthetic relevance. I want to tickle people's intellectual sensibilities and instill a sense of wonder.
Jason Silva
#6. Paul Levinson has outdone himself: The Plot to Save Socrates is a philosophically rich gem full of big ideas and wonderful time-travel tricks.
Robert J. Sawyer
#7. I write from my knowledge not my lack, from my strength not my weakness. I am not interested if anyone knows whether or not I am familiar with big words, I am interested in trying to render big ideas in a simple way. I am interested in being understood not admired.
Lucille Clifton
#8. Idealism is based on big ideas. And, as anybody who has ever been asked "What's the big idea?" knows, most big ideas are bad ones.
P. J. O'Rourke
#9. I'd like to be remembered, as a copywriter who had some big ideas. That's what the advertising business is all about. Big ideas
David Ogilvy
#10. I welcome and seek your ideas, but do not bring me small ideas; bring me big ideas to match our future.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
#11. If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science fiction writers are its court jesters. We are Wise Fools who can leap, caper, utter prophecies, and scratch ourselves in public. We can play with Big Ideas because the garish motley of our pulp origins make us seem harmless.
Bruce Sterling
#12. I can't disagree. I laugh weakly, walking him to the door. As he leaves I'm wondering and not wondering what happens in the world of Tim Price, which is really the world of most of us: big ideas, guy stuff, boy meets the world, boy gets it.
Bret Easton Ellis
#13. Believe in something larger than yourself ... get involved in the big ideas of your time.
Barbara Bush
#14. I just kept moodling. I came up with hundreds of ideas. Most of them were too small, but I kept at it and after a while I moodled up a few big ones. With some tinkering, I turned those big ideas into real possibilities and from there I created my masterpiece..." -Dill
Paige Britt
#15. I think of myself as a bad writer with big ideas, but I'd rather be that than a big writer with bad ideas.
Michael Moorcock
#16. I would like to have insights into things like government, all those big ideas that you brought up that I simply don't have ideas about. I would like to be able to since so many people discuss them, but I don't want to work at them. I don't think my ambition is that strong in that direction.
Jasper Johns
#17. Big ideas are so hard to recognize, so fragile, so easy to kill. don't forget that, all of you who don't have them.
John Elliott
#18. You're also looking at a global warming solution here in Europe: smaller vehicles, more energy efficient, many which use diesel fuel which is more efficient. And the price of gas here is $6 a gallon to discourage guzzling. A lot of big ideas and innovations coming out of Europe.
Chris Cuomo
#19. The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas - fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.
P. J. O'Rourke
#20. Suffice it to say, there are some very big ideas in Prometheus and, therefore, it covers a very vast expanse of time.
Damon Lindelof
#21. The job of the leader is to get the big ideas right.
David Petraeus
#22. It's time for the party of big ideas, not the party of Big Brother!
Mitt Romney
#23. That's so her. You know, torn between Big Ideas and a party. She's always been that way.
Claire Messud
#24. What I notice about people who are gifted in filmmaking is that they're great thinkers. They engage with big ideas and they engage with people.
Ben Whishaw
#25. And, if you'll investigate the history of science, my dear boy, I think you'll find that most of the really big ideas have come from intelligent playfulness. All the sober, thin-lipped concentration is really just a matter of tidying up around the fringes of the big ideas.
Kurt Vonnegut
#26. I want to build a Big Labor party. A party of big ideas. A party which is deeply connected to the community. A party which reflects our diverse nation.
Bill Shorten
#27. Big ideas come from forward thinking people who challenge the norm, think outside the box, and invent the world they see inside rather than submitting to the limitations of current dilemmas
T.D. Jakes
#28. I get a lot of big ideas, and occasionally I actually come up with one myself.
Bauvard
#29. There are two kinds of great power which can shake the earth: Mega earthquakes and big ideas!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#30. I have big ideas. If you don't like them, don't vote for me.
Terry McAuliffe
#31. Big ideas developed in a vacuum are doomed from the start. Feedback is the essential tool for building and growing a successful company.
Jay Samit
#32. We've had three big ideas at Amazon that we've stuck with for 18 years, and they're the reason we're successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.
Jeff Bezos
#33. My second record was all about big ideas - I was trying to make big statements about the culture, about life. I think in a certain way, I was a 27 year old kid with a guitar.
Duncan Sheik
#34. Small ideas that turn into big ideas - that really inspires me.
Wiz Khalifa
#35. My novels are high concept. I guess big ideas interest me more than, say, the minutiae of domestic life.
Scarlett Thomas
#36. Sometimes people think Y Combinator has big ideas about themes. But really, we just fund the best startups.
Sam Altman
#37. My novels tend to come about from a fusion of two big ideas, creating a critical mass that then fissions, throwing off hundreds of other particles, riffs, tropes and characters.
Will Self
#38. People, we're always reaching for these big things... you know? Big ideas... big moments... big lives. And all the while the little things we're ignoring are undoing us.
Joshua Dysart
#40. You may live in an unknown small village, but if you have big ideas, the world will come and find you!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#41. The aging process is totally minimizing. Life in general is pretty minimizing because you have a lot of big ideas, and you have to battle the mistaken delusions and instability that come with youth.
Natasha Lyonne
#42. Not romantic," she disagreed. "To me it would be romantic if Antony properly fell on his sword and kicked the bucket and Cleopatra escaped and lived a lovely life sailing along the Nile without him and his big ideas ruining her kingdom.
Jack Gantos
#43. The big ideas always come in flashes. I don't really craft stories that much. I genuinely don't know where these people come from, and I've often wondered if writing is just a socially acceptable form of madness.
Taiye Selasi
#44. We have big ideas. I just think that's part of how you campaign. You talk to the American people about big things.
Newt Gingrich
#45. I don't have big ideas. I sometimes have small ideas, which seem to work out.
Matt Mullenweg
#46. Blog culture has a hard time digesting narratives, but it has an easy time digesting 'big ideas' pieces.
Hanna Rosin
#47. These people who are always briskly doing something and as busy as waltzing mice, they have little, sharp, staccato ideas, such as: "I see where I can make an annual cut of $3.47 in my meat budget." But they have no slow, big ideas.
Brenda Ueland
#49. I've never had a really creative idea sitting at my desk. All the big ideas that made a difference happened when I was playing outside.
Barbara Corcoran
#50. People that love quotes are those short on time, but long on big ideas.
Bruce Edwin
#52. Openness explains the ability to innovate and come up with big ideas because you're open to them, and fluid intelligence explains the ability to go and execute.
Adeo Ressi
#53. Big ideas, big ambitious projects need to be embedded within culture at a level deeper than the political winds. It needs to be deeper than the economic fluctuations that could turn people against an expensive project because they're on an unemployment line and can't feed their families.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
#54. I am a joyful conservative, unafraid to articulate big ideas with an optimistic smile.
Kevin Cramer
#55. It's hard to feel smart when you're always forgetting things, but Mama Shannon says that's how you can tell a smart person. They're too busy thinking about Big Ideas to worry about little details like tying their shoes or remembering their homework" -Fella
Sarah Dooley
#56. I always played around with writing songs, but when you're spending a lot of time in bars, you have a lot of big ideas, but you don't do much with them.
Dave Gahan
#57. In our quest to tweet, like, and trend, we have forgotten that brands can be built through advertising. Ads can generate big ideas that can never be trumped by tactics. That is the magic of an ad, and that is what is missing from many ads today.
Jerry Della Femina
#59. Don't get any big ideas, They're not gonna happen.
Thom Yorke
#60. Government is really successful when it's willing to make big, bold objectives, like, 'We're going to get to the moon.' But without leaders with big ideas, we get stuck.
Bill Maris
#61. For some odd reason, I had an early and extreme multidisciplinary cast of mind. I couldn't stand reaching for a small idea in my own discipline when there was a big idea right over the fence in somebody else's discipline. So I just grabbed in all directions for the big ideas that would really work.
Charlie Munger
#62. Without the little ideas, there are no big ideas.
Twyla Tharp
#63. I get so many big ideas while I'm running and such clarity while I'm lifting weights. And staying fit keeps me happy and positive.
Robin S. Sharma
#64. Big ideas we tend to like are the ones that seem impossible or crazy.
Bill Maris
#65. We built 'Jade Empire,' then we built 'Mass Effect,' then we built 'Dragon Age.' With those last two, when you're dealing with two big ideas that are on their third iterations, you develop some strategies for managing your lore, or you drown!
Marc Laidlaw
#66. Big ideas are little ideas that no-one killed too soon.
Seth Godin
#67. I always tell people that revelling in big ideas for me is kind of like an antidote to existential angst.
Jason Silva
#68. Don't bother getting out of bed.
The world is crowded enough
without you and your big ideas.
Pamela August Russell
#69. I've never had any big ideas about being the solo.
Ringo Starr
#70. I am not going to make promises I can't keep. I am not going to talk about big ideas like single-payer and then not level with people about how much it will cost.
Hillary Clinton
#71. People laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas, you have to use big words to express them, haven't you?
L.M. Montgomery
#72. There is no accountability today ... no willingness to focus on big ideas.
Michael Bloomberg
#73. Little do women know what big ideas I have in my pants.
Bill Maher
#74. I like to say that I'm tracing the intersection between big ideas and human experience, between theology and real life.
Krista Tippett
#75. I like to be right. I try not to miss the big ideas, forget the little ones, and try to get them right. End of job description.
Jeremy Grantham
#76. Big data will never give you big ideas ... Big data doesn't facilitate big leaps of the imagination. It will never conjure up a PC revolution or any kind of paradigm shift. And while it might tell you what to aim for, it can't tell you how to get there
Margaret Heffernan
#77. Big thoughts are fun to romanticize, but it's many small insights coming together that bring big ideas into the world.
Scott Berkun
#78. Letting Go: A Little Bit at a Time is filled with big ideas that just might change your life. Wise, witty, and important.
Daniel Amen
#79. You will never win fame and fortune unless you invent big ideas.
David Ogilvy
#81. Leaders must pick causes they won't abandon easily, remain committed despite setbacks, and communicate their big ideas over and over again in every encounter.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#82. There is nothing wrong with being a woman, and doing ordinary things. Sometimes small deeds can show big ideas.
Judith Merkle Riley
#83. It's very useful to have a good grasp of all the big ideas in hard and soft science. A, it gives perspective. B, it gives a way for you to organize and file away experience in your head, so to speak.
Charlie Munger
#84. Any idea can be a great idea if you think differently, dream big and commit to seeing it realized
Richard Branson
#85. Acting is something that I always wanted, but I never paid attention to the notion that it might actually work out. You have all sorts of ideas about what you want to do - at one stage, I wanted to be a jockey - but this is the one that's a big deal.
Olivia Thirlby
#86. I had no idea that, when you audition for television or movies, you go to a big building - like, an office building - and you walk in the room, and everybody, I assumed, was smarter than me and better than me, and there's actors you recognize. I once fainted at an audition.
Kurt Fuller
#87. Shouldn't someone tag Mr. Kennedy's bold new imaginative program with its proper age? Under the tousled boyish haircut is still old Karl Marx-first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a government being Big Brother.
Ronald Reagan
#88. I love the idea of doing comedy, whether it's action comedy or just straight comedy. It's such a big, new world for me that I'm starting to realize that any character that I relate to, in any way, shape or form, or that I have any appreciation for, given enough preparation, I can find that person.
Zoe Bell
#89. There are a million ideas in a world of stories. Humans are storytelling animals. Everything's a story, everyone's got stories, we're perceiving stories, we're interested in stories. So to me, the big nut to crack is to how to tell a story, what's the right way to tell a particular story.
Richard Linklater
#90. My ideas tend to be either really big in terms of like, the logistics, or really small.
Cary Fukunaga
#91. Once I'm given an idea for a story I have a million ideas on how it should be illustrated, but I don't have a big shoebox full of unfinished ideas.
Brian Selznick
#92. They couldn't bear the idea of death being a big black nothing.
John Green
#93. On my walks, that's when the good ideas come. The kind of hard, gritty work is when you're sitting at the computer and it's kind of intense and you're kind of in super control of it - the walks are when you let go. That's when the really big breakthroughs come in, and it's very strange.
Maria Semple
#94. The hiring of Phil Messina, the production designer, was a big decision. He's so gifted, and his ideas were always so smart and rooted in American history and architecture. Nothing feels like it's not us, or couldn't be us, and I think that's very important.
Nina Jacobson
#95. A lot of ideas don't translate very well into art. To say, "Oh my god, the grass is green ... " You're going to end up with a big green painting.
John Baldessari
#96. I wanted to make a redemptive thriller that didn't end with some kind of big, crazy shootout and blood spill, but more of a collision of ideas and a discussion of ethics.
Joel Edgerton
#98. Let us tackle the big issues with bold ideas that transform Iowa to accomplish our shared mission to grow Iowa, and realize our shared vision of Iowa as the best place to live, work and raise a family.
Thomas Vilsack
#99. The world is too big and too intricate to conform to our ideas of what it should be like ... Just because we invent myths and theories to explain away the chaos we're still going to live in a world that's older and more complicated than we'll ever understand.
Moby
#100. Lots of people dream big and talk about big bold ideas but never do anything. I judge people by what they've done. The ratio of something to nothing is infinite. So just do something.
Peter Diamandis
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