Transformative Ideas Quotes

Sometimes people invent things because they want to stay alive or feed their children or conquer the village next door. But just as often, new ideas come into the world simply because they're fun. And here's the really strange thing: many of those playful but seemingly frivolous inventions ended up sparking momentous transformations in science, in politics and society.

The most revolutionary ideas are not sellable, but only mind-changing.

How can you be inspired by Cameron and Miliband? These guys are just drabness personified.

I'm not saying I'm gonna change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world.

Every great idea exerts, on first appearing, a tyrannical influence: Hence, the advantages it brings are turned all too soon into disadvantages.

What is the most powerful force in the world? And I think you would agree that is a big idea if it is in the hands of an entrepreneur who is actually going to make the idea not only happen, but spread all across society. And we understand that in business but we have need for entrepreneurship just as much in education, human rights, health, and the environment as we do in hotels and steel.

Ideas that transform industries almost never come from inside those industries.

We have a lot of people revolutionizing the world because they've never had to present a working model.

Steve Jobs' ability to focus in on a few things that count, get people who get user interface right, and market things as revolutionary are amazing things.

In the age of revolution you have to be able to imagine revolutionary alternatives to the status quo. If you can't, you'll be relegated to the swollen ranks of keyboard-pounding automatons.

Build what you want to see in the world.

When you shoot for big stuff, you stay true to the movement. You fight unapologetically on the inside; that is a very, very powerful way to pass the radical solutions that are necessary to face the radical problems that you have.

You can absolutely be what you can't see! That's what innovators and disruptors do.

I see people as the nucleus of a great idea that hasn't come to be yet.

For all the great dreams profitlessly invested in the digital computer, it is nonetheless true that not since the framers of the American Constitution took seriously the idea that all men are created equal has an idea so transformed the material conditions of life, the expectations of the race.

These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.

Juan Enriquez will change your view of change itself.

I buy a lot of books I never read. But that's not really a waste, since all it takes is one idea from even one book to radically reshape the way a person leads, thinks and lives.

What I am interested in are the philosophies of the future. That's what drives me.

All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience.

What seems impossible today, may half a century hence have become commonplace.

I think very often the boat-rockers turn out to be the people who are building the craft

Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.

In every century, there are a handful of writers who help the human race to evolve. Andrea is one of them.

But business is just a vehicle for transforming the ideas in your head into something real, something tangible, that actually improves the lives of others. To create something unique and beautiful and valuable is very hard. It’s very special to do. It doesn’t happen fast.