68 Great Innovation Quotes

Sometimes when you are doing a presentation, a great quote can set the scene, get the emotional reaction you are looking for or bring some credibility to what you are pitching.

Here’s a list of quotes about innovation that may be useful for a presentation or a talk. 

Even if you aren’t doing a presentation or a talk, there are so some great inspirational quotes. It’s well worth a quick read.

1.      It's better to have tried and failed than never tried, you can rest easy knowing you gave it a go. Katherine Kelly

2.      Innovation is taking two things that exist and putting them together in a new way. Tom Freston

3.      Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things. Theodore Levitt

4.      I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate. Jeff Bezos

5.      If I had asked the public what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. Henry Ford

6.      Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right. Henry Ford

7.      When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills. Chinese proverb

8.      The best way to predict the future is to create it. Alan Kay

9.      I skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been. Wayne Gretzky

10.   The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. Albert Einstein

11.   You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps. David Lloyd George

12.   The riskiest thing we can do is just maintain the status quo. Bob Iger

13.   Be an innovator, not an imitator. Audrey Carballo

14.   There’s a way to do it better. Find it. Thomas Edison

15.   Innovation comes from saying NO to 1000 things. Steve Jobs

16.   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

17.   If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it. Albert Einstein

18.   A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for. William Shedd

19.   There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period. Brené Brown

20.   If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied. Alfred Nobel  

21.   Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear. George Addair

22.   When looking to innovate—fail forward. Innovation can be a chaotic process, embrace it and learn from your failures. Luke Wester 

23.   If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative. Woody Allen

24.   What is now proved was once only imagined.    William Blake

25.   Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.    J. K. Rowling

26.   A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock pile when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind. Antoine Saint-Exupéry

27.   Ultimately, progress and innovation win.    Travis Kalanick

28.   What good is an idea if it remains an idea? Try. Experiment. Fail. Try again. Change the world. Simon Sinek

29.   The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away. Linus Pauling

30.   Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game. Johann Goethe

31.   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

32.   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

33.   The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all what the world needs most are dreamers that do. Sarah Ban Breathnach

34.   The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn. Ralph Waldo Emerson

35.   You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. Maya Angelou

36.   The Stone Age didn’t end because they ran out of stones. Unknown

37.   They did not know it was impossible so they did it. Mark Twain

38.   If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. Abraham Maslow

39.   Finding opportunity is a matter of believing it’s there. Barbara Corcoran

40.   The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions. Antony Jay

41.   I want to put a ding in the universe. Steve Jobs

42.   Anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve. J.K. Rowling

43.   If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old. Peter F. Drucker

44.   If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong. Charles Kettering

45.   Innovation is seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. Dr. Albert Szent- Györgyi

46.   Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow. William Pollard

47.   The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.    Albert Einstein

48.   Every once in a while, a new technology, an old problem, and a big idea turn into an innovation.    Dean Kamen

49.   For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.    Margaret Heffernan

50.   Changes call for innovation, and innovation leads to progress.    Li Keqiang

51.   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

52.   Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. John Steinbeck

53.   I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. Thomas Edison

54.   Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. George Patton

55.   Exploration is the engine that drives innovation. Edith Widder

56.   You can expect no influence if you are not susceptible to influence. Carl Jung

57.   There is only one thing stronger than all the armies of the world: and that is an idea whose time has come.   Victor Hugo

58.   There’s no good idea that cannot be improved on.    Michael Eisner

59.   A dream will not become an innovation if there is no realization. Ciputra

60.   Innovation is the calling card of the future.   Anna Eshoo

61. One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive one. Ralph Waldo Emerson

62. Innovation almost never fails due to a lack of creativity. It’s almost always due to a lack of discipline. Doblin

63. 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. A classic for corporates by J.P. Getty

64. 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

65. He who asks a question is a fool for 5 minutes. He who does not ask a question remains a fool forever. Chinese proverb

66. The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. Albert Bartlett

67. Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Anais Nin

68. Progress is more important that perfection. Simon Sinek

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