Richard Florida Quotes & Sayings

Human creativity is the ultimate economic resource. — Richard Florida

Snoop is a tour de force! It's one of the smartest and most original books I've come across in a long time. I devoured it and then rushed over to clean up my desk and change my iPod playlist. — Richard Florida

Too much of what led up to the crisis in the old bubble days - the conspicuous consumption, the latter-day Gatsbyism - was fueled by a need to fill a huge emotional and psychological void left by the absence of meaningful work. When people cease to find meaning in work, when work is boring, alienating, and dehumanizing, the only option becomes the urge to consume - to buy happiness off the shelf, a phenomenon we now know cannot suffice in the long term. — Richard Florida

Builders need to take their preeminent position back from the traders for the economy of the future to flourish. — Richard Florida

Ideas are the currency of the new economy. — Richard Florida

It's not that gays and diversity equal high technology. But if your culture is not such that it can accept difference, and uniqueness and oddity and eccentricity, you will not get high tech industry. — Richard Florida

Places that succeed in attracting and retaining creative class people prosper; those that fail don't. — Richard Florida

Who can ever forget George W. Bush, in the days and weeks after the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, exhorting people not to be afraid, to get out and do the right thing, the patriotic thing, the one thing that could get the economy moving forward again: start shopping. — Richard Florida

As the economy has become more specialized and the occupational division of labor has deepened, the Creative Class has increasingly outsourced functions that were previously provided within the family to the Service Class. — Richard Florida

Denser cities are smarter and more productive — Richard Florida

The creative individual is no longer viewed as an iconoclast. He - or she - is the new mainstream. — Richard Florida

New Jersey boasts the highest percentage of passport holders (68%); Delaware (67%), Alaska (65%), Massachusetts (63%), New York (62%), and California (60%) are close behind. At the opposite end of the spectrum, less than one in five residents of Mississippi are passport holders, and just one in four residents of West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, and Arkansas. — Richard Florida

Over time, this growing tendency of like marrying like will only reinforce clustering and geographic sorting along class lines, giving the emerging map of social, economic, and cultural segregation even greater permanence. — Richard Florida

I call the age we are entering the creative age because the key factor propelling us forward is the rise of creativity as the primary mover of our economy. — Richard Florida

Beneath the surface, unnoticed by many, an even deeper force was at work - the rise of creativity as a fundamental economic driver, and the rise of a new social class, the Creative Class. — Richard Florida

Access to talented and creative people is to modern business what access to coal and iron ore was to steel-making. — Richard Florida

People don't need to be managed, they need to be unleashed. — Richard Florida