His one-liner was "ideas are worthless", and "great ideas are worth their weight in gold". I interpreted the latter as "great ideas are worth zero".

So unless I misinterpreted the last part, his comment was the first with witty put downs.

Good ideas are valuble and worthwhile. And it may take many years of hard work to come up with them. This is why the patent system was created: to allow people who come up with these ideas to have them valued as worthwhile, and compensated as such.

I understand there are some people who just have an idea that is shallow, and then do nothing with it. But the original comment said all ideas were worthless.