Idea Evaluation Quotes

The idea was fantastically, wildly improbable. But like most fantastically, wildly improbable ideas it was at least as worthy of consideration as a more mundane one to which the facts had been strenuously bent to fit.

Be careful of hubris about ideas—especially your own. Remember always, that there is one commonality between all the good ideas that were ever created and all the bad ideas: The people you created them thought that they were good ideas.

What is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish useful ideas from the worthless ones.

I don’t attack people. I attack ideas. And some very good people can have some very bad ideas.

There's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.

Good ideas will always get funded, so that's not going to be a problem. But you will see that it will be harder and harder for bad ideas to get funded.

Though reading and conversation may furnish us with many ideas of men and things, yet it is our own meditation must form our judgment.

We don’t need to ban bad ideas. We just need to criticize bad ideas.

Taste tends to develop very unevenly. It's rare that the same person has good visual taste and good taste in people and taste in ideas.

It doesn't matter whose idea it is or where it came from or when it arrived in the process. The best idea is the best idea no matter what.

The typical eye sees the ten per cent bad of an idea and overlooks the ninety per cent good.

If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away.

I don't have any ideas; my coaches have them. I just pass the ideas on and referee the arguments.

My job is to put as many ideas out there as possible every day. Some of them will get traction, some won't - some of them shouldn't.

In order to get past disagreements, you just can't have one person with power decide. In other words, so just because I'm a boss, it would be terrible if I then said, "Okay, we're gonna go do this." That's why, after that thoughtful disagreement, there has to be a process of an idea meritocracy. That means okay, now you have to vote, not that the decision resides with power. And then you vote and move beyond it.

Principle says it's not who put forth an idea. It's not the position of the person who put forth an idea; it's not the longevity of the person or the party of the person. That's not what it is at all. In a power system, that's the way it works. But in a principle system, it's what it says.

We all have great ideas. No one ever says, "I've got this terrible idea."

You should have an investment thesis that essentially says why you think this is potentially a good idea.

Every time you create something new, there should be questions. And to me, that's a sign that you've actually done something that is transformative.

Entrepreneurs always pitch their idea as 'the X of Y', so this is going to be 'the Microsoft of food.' And yet disruptive innovations usually don't have that character. Most of the time, if something seems like a good idea, it probably isn't.

You must find the ideas that have some promise in them... It is not enough to just have ideas.

During the course of the year a number of ideas just come up automatically. I could be walking down the street. Or shaving. An idea will hit me and I'll write it down. Then, when I'm ready to write, I check my little matchbooks and napkins and find that it is good or it's pretty terrible. There are other times when I don't have any ideas and I'll go into a room and close the door and I sit and sweat it out for a day or a month and eventually I come up with [something].

I have multiple ideas per day, all the time. The vast majority of these are completely idiotic. Usually, I just sit on the idea for several months. And if I have not decided that it's idiotic, then it's... might be a good idea.

... In a free society, skeptics are the watchdogs against irrationalism - the consumer advocates of ideas. Debunking is not simply the divestment of bunk; its utility is in offering a better alternative, along with a lesson on how thinking goes wrong.

When...did it become irrational to dislike religion, any religion, even to dislike it vehemently? When did reason get redescribed as unreason? When were the fairy stories of the superstitious placed above criticism, beyond satire? A religion was not a race. It was an idea, and ideas stood (or fell) because they were strong enough (or too weak) to withstand criticism, not because they were shielded from it. Strong ideas welcomed dissent.