Linus Pauling — "The only way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas and throw the bad ones …"
The only way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas and throw the bad ones away.
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More from Linus Pauling
"The best way to learn is to teach."
"I think that the most important thing is to be honest with yourself and with others."
"I have come to the conclusion that the proper way to live is to be kind to everyone."
"Vitamin C is the most important of all vitamins."
"I have never had a bad idea."
Details
Attributed, often cited as a general principle of his scientific method.
Date: Unknown, likely mid-20th century
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Found in 2 providers: grok,deepseek
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Creative output depends on volume. You cannot reliably produce one brilliant idea by thinking carefully once — instead, generate ideas freely and in large numbers, then ruthlessly evaluate and discard the weak ones. Quality emerges through filtering, not from cautious initial thinking. This challenges the myth of lone-genius inspiration, replacing it with a systematic process that treats ideation as raw material requiring refinement.
Relevance to Linus Pauling
Pauling embodied prolific intellectual output across chemistry and beyond. He proposed major theoretical frameworks — resonance structures, electronegativity scales, the alpha helix — knowing most would require revision. His vitamin C megadose advocacy, though later disputed, showed the same willingness to champion bold hypotheses. Winning two Nobel Prizes in unrelated fields reflects a mind that generated ideas across domains and refined rather than restrained them.
The era
The mid-20th century was science's most productive era: Cold War competition poured unprecedented funding into research, brainstorming was formalized as a workplace methodology by Alex Osborn in 1953, and laboratory teams replaced the solo inventor model. Scientific progress depended on generating competing hypotheses rapidly. This made Pauling's framing — volume first, judgment second — not just philosophical but operationally true for how innovation actually functioned.
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