The 101 Best (And Most Inspiring) Quotes On Innovation

In business, maintaining the status quo is death.

If you’re not moving forward, you’re falling behind – particularly in today’s world.

Innovation is critical to every company, whether it is new products or services, more efficient manufacturing processes, or new marketing and sales channels.

It lays the groundwork for continued growth by introducing new solutions for your customers and prospects.

But maybe even more importantly, it creates excitement for your employees and boosts their job satisfaction and morale.

Innovation does not require some exotic new technology. It requires an innovative culture – one that is embraced by the people at the top and flows through the whole organization.

To help you create that culture and succeed, here are the:

101 Best (And Most Inspiring)
Innovation Quotes

1

“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”
– John Steinbeck
Author (1902-68)

2

“Never confuse motion with action.”
– Ernest Hemingway
Author (1899-1961)

3

“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.”
– Howard Aiken
Physicist, computing pioneer (1900-1973)

4

“What is now proved was once only imagined.”
– William Blake
Poet (1757-1827)

5

“If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.”
– Alfred Nobel
Founder of the Nobel Prize (1833-1896)

6

“We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.”
– Anais Nin
Author (1903-77)

7

“For my first show at ‘SNL’, I wrote a Bill Clinton sketch, and during our read-through, it wasn’t getting any laughs. This weight of embarrassment came over me, and I felt like I was sweating from my spine out. But I realized, ‘Okay, that happened, and I did not die.’ You’ve got to experience failure to understand that you can survive it.”
– Tina Fey
Actress, comedian (1970-)

8

“Anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.”
– J. K. Rowling
Author (1965-)

9

“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”
– Andy Warhol
Artist (1928-1987)

10

“Minds are like parachutes; they work best when open.”
– Thomas Dewar
Distiller, businessman (1864-1930)

11

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
– George Bernard Shaw
Playwright (1856-1950)

12

“The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.”
­ Arthur C. Clarke
Author, futurist (1917-2008)

13

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”
– Abraham Maslow
Psychologist (1908-70)

14

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”
– Albert Einstein
Theoretical physicist (1879-1955)

15

“I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.”
– Miles Davis
Musician, composer (1926-91)

16

 “Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.”
– Jonas Salk
Researcher who discovered polio (1914-95)

17

“If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.”
– Charles Kettering
Inventor, engineer, businessman (1876-1958)

18

“The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.”
– Antony Jay
Writer, director (1930-2016)

19

“Security is mostly a superstition. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
– Helen Keller
Author, activist (1880-1968)

20

“There is only one thing stronger than all the armies of the world: and that is an idea whose time has come.”
– Victor Hugo
Author (1802-85)

21

“Swipe from the best, then adapt.”
– Tom Peters
Business author (1942-)

22

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”
– Maya Angelou
Poet, activist (1928-2014)

23

“Give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson
Author (1850-94)

24

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Author,  statesman (1749-1832)

25

“I want to put a ding in the universe.”
– Steve Jobs
Co-founder, Apple Inc. (1955-2011)

26

“The greater the contrast, the greater the potential. Great energy only comes from a correspondingly great tension of opposites.”
– Carl Jung
Founded analytical psychology (1875-1961)

27

“We don’t know who discovered water, but we’re certain it wasn’t a fish.”
– John Culkin
Media scholor, critic (1928-93)

28

“I will act as if what I do will make a difference.”
– William James
Philosopher, psychologist (1842-1910)

29

“99 percent of success is built on failure.”
– Charles Kettering
Inventor, engineer, businessman (1876-1958)

30

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
Author (1896-1940)

31

“You can’t solve a problem on the same level that it was created. You have to rise above it to the next level.”
– Albert Einstein
Theoretical physicist (1879-1955)

32

“You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.”
– Jack London
Author (1876-1916)

33

“Listen to anyone with an original idea, no matter how absurd it may sound at first. If you put fences around people, you get sheep. Give people the room they need.”
– William McKnight
Businessman, philanthropist (1887-1978)

34

“Because of their courage, their lack of fear, they (creative people) are willing to make silly mistakes. The truly creative person is one who can think crazy; such a person knows full well that many of his great ideas will prove to be worthless. The creative person is flexible; he is able to change as the situation changes, to break habits, to face indecision and changes in conditions without undue stress. He is not threatened by the unexpected as rigid, inflexible people are.”
– Frank G. Goble
Author, educator (1916-2000)

35

“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.”
– – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Author, statesman (1749-1832)

36

“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”
– Bertrand Russell
Nobel laureate (1872-1970)

37

“Held in the palms of thousands of disgruntled people over the centuries have been ideas worth millions – if they only had taken the first step and then followed through.”
– Robert M. Hayes
Author, professor (1926-)

38

“Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.”
– George Lois
Art director, designer (1931-)

39

“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”
– John Maynard Keynes
Economist (1883-1946)

40

“The greatest invention in the world is the mind of a child.”
– Thomas Edison
Inventor, businessman (1847-1931)

41

“No matter how well you perform, there’s always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it’s lousy.”
– Sir Laurence Olivier
Actor (1907-89)

42

“You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt
First Lady, diplomat (1884-1962)

43

“The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away.”
– Linus Pauling
Nobel Peace Prize winner (1901-94)

44

“The enterprise that does not innovate ages and declines. And in a period of rapid change such as the present – the decline will be fast.”
– Peter Drucker
Author, management consultant (1909-2005)

45

 “A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock pile when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind.”
– Antoine Saint-Exupery
Author, aviator (1900-44)

46

“Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn’t do nothing.”
– Duke Ellington
Muscian, composer (1899-1974)

47

“The man with a new idea is a crank – until the idea succeeds.”
– Mark Twain
Author (1835-1910)

48

“Don’t be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.”
– David Lloyd George
British politician, statesman (1863-1945)

49

“The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development.”
– Alfred North Whitehead
Mathematician, philosopher (1861-1947)

50

“A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.”
– Victor Hugo
Author (1802-85)

51

“Systems die; instincts remain.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes
U.S. Supreme Court Justice (1841-1935)

52

“You will never find the time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.”
– Charles Buxton
English brewer, philanthropist (1823-1871)

53

“Whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done, I have learned, by a monomaniac with a mission.”
– Peter Drucker
Author, management consultant (1909-2005)

54

“One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive one.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Essayist, poet (1803-82)

55

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
– Margaret Mead
Cultural anthropologist (1901-1978)

56

“The way to succeed is to double your failure rate.”
– Thomas Watson
Founder of IBM (1874-1956)

57

“Innovation opportunities do not come with the tempest but with the rustling of the breeze.”
– Peter Drucker
Author, management consultant (1909-2005)

58

“You can only be as good as you dare to be bad.”
– John Barrymore
Actor (1882-1942)

59

“No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered.”
– Winston Churchill
British Prime Minister, statesman (1874-1965)

60

“If the creator has a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely would have meant for us to stick it out.”
– Arthur Koestler
Author (1905-1983)

61

“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.”
– Emile Chartier
Philosopher, journalist (1868-1951)

62

“There’s always an element of chance and you must be willing to live with that element. If you insist on certainty, you will paralyze yourself.”
– J.P. Getty
Founder of Getty Oil (1892-1976)

63

“The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.”
– Albert Einstein
Theoretical physicist (1879-1955)

64

“Every act of creation is, first of all, an act of destruction.”
– Pablo Picasso
Artist (1881-1973)

65

“Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.”
– Jonathan Swift
Satirist, essayist (1667-1745)

66

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
– Alan Kay
Computer scientist (1940-)

67

“If you go to your grave without painting your masterpiece, it will not get painted. No one else can paint it.”
– Gordon MacKenzie
Artist

68

“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Author (1821-81)

69

“There is a vitality, a life force, that is translated to you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and will be lost.”
– Martha Graham
Dancer, Choreographer (1894-1991)

70

“We have approximately 60,000 thoughts in a day. Unfortunately, 95% of them are thoughts we had the day before.”
– Deepak Chopra
Author (1947-)

71

“Confusion is a word we have invented for an order that is not yet understood.”
– Henry Miller
Author (1891-1980)

72

“I refuse to be intimidated by reality anymore. What is reality? Nothing but a collective hunch.”
– Lily Tomlin
Comedian, actress (1939-)

73

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
– Albert Einstein
Theoretical physicist (1879-1955)

74

“Now that we have met with paradox we have some hope of making progress.”
– Niels Bohr
Physicist (1885-1962)

75

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”
– Steve Jobs
Co-founder, Apple Inc. (1955-2011)

76

“If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think.”
– Clarence Darrow
American lawyer (1857-1938)

77

 “I am looking for a lot of people who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done.”
– Henry Ford
Founder, Ford Motor Co. (1863-1947)

78

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

79

“The Stone Age didn’t end because they ran out of stones.”
– Unknown

80

“When all think alike, then no one is thinking.”
– Walter Lippman
Writer, reporter (1889-1974)

81

“Capital isn’t so important in business. Experience isn’t so important. You can get both these things. What is important is ideas. If you have ideas, you have the main asset you need, and there isn’t any limit to what you can do with your business and your life.”
– Harvey Firestone
Founder, Firestone Tire and Rubber (1868-1938)

82

“Creativity, as has been said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know. Hence, to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.”
– George Kneller
Author

83

“It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date.”
– Roger von Oech
Speaker, author (1948-)

84

“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.”
– Albert Szent-Gyorgy
Nobel Prize winner (1893-1986)

85

“When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: “Only stand out of my light.” Perhaps someday we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light.”
– John W. Gardner
Founder of Common Cause (1912-2002)

86

“We shall not cease from exploration, and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
– T. S. Eliot
Poet, playwright (1888-1965)

87

“There’s a way to do it better – find it.”
– Thomas Edison
Inventor, businessman (1847-1931)

88

“The essential part of creativity is not being afraid to fail.”
– Edwin H. Land
Co-founder of Polaroid (1909-1991)

89

“Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.”
– James Russell Lowell
Poet, diplomat (1819-1891)

90

“Too much of our work amounts to the drudgery of arranging means toward ends, mechanically placing the right foot in front of the left and the left in front of the right, moving down narrow corridors toward narrow goals. Play widens the halls. Work will always be with us, and many works are worthy. But the worthiest works of all often reflect an artful creativity that looks more like play than work.”
– James A. Ogilvy
Author

91

“The achievement of excellence can only occur if the organization promotes a culture of creative dissatisfaction.”
– Lawrence Miller
Author (1945)

92

“Innovation– any new idea–by definition will not be accepted at first. It takes repeated attempts, endless demonstrations, monotonous rehearsals before innovation can be accepted and internalized by an organization. This requires courageous patience.”
– Warren Bennis
Author, consultant (1925-2014)

93

“Success is on the far side of failure.”
– Thomas Watson
Founder of IBM (1874-1956)

94

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”
– Albert Einstein
Theoretical physicist (1879-1955)

95

“Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.”
– Chuck Jones
Animator (1912-2002)

96

“An inventor is simply a person who doesn’t take his education too seriously. You see, from the time a person is six years old until he graduates from college he has to take three or four examinations a year. If he flunks once, he is out. But an inventor is almost always failing. He tries and fails maybe a thousand times. It he succeeds once then he’s in. These two things are diametrically opposite. We often say that the biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.”
– Charles Kettering
Inventor, engineer, businessman (1876-1958)

97

“The law of floatation was not discovered by contemplating the sinking of things, but by contemplating the floating of things which floated naturally, and then intelligently asking why they did so.”
– Thomas Troward
Author (1847-1916)

98

“In every work of genius, we recognize our once rejected thoughts.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Essayist, poet (1803-82)

99

“The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants.”
– Roger von Oech
Speaker, author (1948-)

100

“Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.”
– Theodore Levitt
Economist, Harvard professor (1925-2006)

101

“If you can dream it, you can do it.”
– Walt Disney
Entrepreneur, animator (1901-66)

 

If you need more inspiration, you can find other inspiring leadership quotes from women, military leaders, folks like Mark Twain or subjects like delegating.