Quotes & Sayings About Children's Creativity

Alas! It seems to me that when one is as good as this at dissecting children who are to born, one can't stiffen up enough to create them. — Gustave Flaubert

The child is aware of unlimited potential, and this munificence is one of the joys of creativity.
Those of use who struggle in our own ways, small or great, trickles or rivers, to create, are constantly having to unlearn what the world would teach us... — Madeleine L'Engle

Having children made me go down a road of serious introspection and self-examination. I think it's informed and hopefully enhanced my creativity. — Madonna Ciccone

Children should also be taught that success and fulfillment come from inside, and it is only inside that matters. Each of us is responsible for how we feel, what we wish for, and how we decide to approach life's challenges. The highest responsibility is fulfilled not by doing a huge amount of work but by doing the work of spirit in an attitude of joy and creativity. This is the only way that life without struggle becomes possible. — Deepak Chopra

You can make lots of mistakes, but if you give children avenues for creativity and joy, they will have resources to carry them through. For example, if cooking together, reading, listening to music, coloring, participating in sports, or taking a walk in the woods are paired with pleasure and closeness, throughout life doing these things will kindle old feelings of happiness an/or comfort. — Charlotte Sophia Kasl

The arts are statistically proven to increase independent thinking, creativity, discipline, balance, and academic improvement in children. — Mya

Teaching creativity to your child isn't like teaching good manners. No one can paint a masterpiece by bowing to another person's precepts about elbows on the table. — Gurney Williams

Love is the real power. It's the energy that cherishes. The more you work with that energy, the more you will see how people respond naturally to it, and the more you will want to use it. It brings out your creativity, and helps everyone around you flower. Your children, the people you work with
everyone blooms. — Marion Woodman

She feels so contented in giving birth to a child, in helping the child to grow; and that's why she does not need any other kind of creativity. Her creative urge is fulfilled. But man is in trouble: he cannot give birth to a child, he cannot have the child in his womb. He has to find a substitute, otherwise he will always feel inferior to the woman. And deep down he does feel that he is inferior. Because of that feeling of inferiority man tries to create paintings, statues, dramas, he writes poetry, novels, explores the whole scientific world of creativity. — Rajneesh

Only by remembering to say 'no' will the women of 21st century regain their voice and remember their power. 'No' is the most important word in a woman's dialectic arsenal, and it is the one word that our employers, our leaders, and quite often, the men in our lives would do anything to prevent us from saying. No, we will not serve. No, we will not settle for the dirty work, the low-paid work, the unpaid work. No, we will not stay late at the office, look after the kids, sort out the shopping. We refuse to fit the enormity of our passion, our creativity, and our potential into the rigid physical prison laid down for us since we were small children. No. We refuse. We will not buy your clothes and shoes and surgical solutions. No, we will not be beautiful; we will not be good. Most of all, we refuse to be beautiful and good. — Laurie Penny

The most potent muse of all is our own inner child. — Stephen Nachmanovitch

Creativity is not just for artists. It's for businesspeople looking for a new way to close a sale; it's for engineers trying to solve a problem; it's for parents who want their children to see the world in more than one way. — Twyla Tharp

Creativity can never be explained by appeal to reason alone. Like the birth of a child, creativity compels us not to explanation but to wonder and awe. — George Vaillant

Relearning from children their need to question and discover can ignite one's creativity and reveal more possibilities. — Nabil N. Jamal

Very well then! I'll write, write write. He let the words soak into his mind and displace all else.
A man had a choice, after all. He devoted his life to his work or to his wife and children and home. It could not be combined; not in this day and age. In this insane world where God was second to income and goodness to wealth. — Richard Matheson

Girls shouldn't throw away their lives. They have the opportunity to not have 25 children - to make something of themselves, and use their brains and creativity. I'm just thrilled about that. — Pam Ferris

Fostering our children's creativity, we are fostering our children's spirituality as well. — Julia Cameron

In limits, there is freedom. Creativity thrives within structure. Creating safe havens where our children are allowed to dream, play, make a mess and, yes, clean it up, we teach them respect for themselves and others. — Julia Cameron

Very few people are accepted as creative: A few painters, a few poets - one in a million. This is foolish! Every human being is a born creator. Watch children and you will see: all children are creative. By and by, we destroy their creativity. — Rajneesh

Creativity and the world of the imagination - the beauty of what we see as a child and the kind of play that we experience as a child - can be a way for us to survive tough times. — Diane Paulus

Nothing is more important than creative play through imagination.
Never stop playing, and never stop imagining! — Carmela Dutra

Where do starfish come from?" asked Sam.
"From the sky," answered Stella. "Starfish are shooting stars that fell in love with the sea."
"Weren't the stars afraid of drowning?" asked Sam.
"No," said Stella. "They all learned how to swim. — Marie-Louise Gay

Where art is concerned, it is the process of creating - exploring, discovering, and experimenting
that has the greatest value. Through self-expression and creativity, children's skills will develop naturally, and their ability to create will soar. — MaryAnn F. Kohl

Fostering creativity in children is as important as any other part of the school curriculum because it feeds the soul. A daily dose of creativity helps children imagine a better world and then create it. — Renee Fleming

Creativity is good and whatever. But if the children don't know how to read, I don't care how creative you are. You're not doing your job. — Michelle Rhee

The most valuable asset a nation has is the creativity of its children. — Alan Plater

Creativity is the key to success in the future, and primary education is where teachers can bring creativity in children at that level. — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

If you want to understand your child better then see through the child's eye. — Revathi Sankaran

I, sole heir to the Munodi line and memory, am childless. A friend who knows such things has told me that this explains my compulsion to capture what I can with black ink on white paper." ("The Volatilized Ceiling of Baron Munodi") — Rikki Ducornet

In an era of parental paranoia, lawsuit mania and testing frenzy, we are failing to inspire our children's curiosity, creativity, and imagination. We are denying them opportunities to tinker, discover, and explore - in short, to play. — Darell Hammond

An educational foundation is only part of the equation. In order for creativity to flourish and imagination to take hold, we also need to expose our children to the arts from a very young age. — Michelle Obama

If our entertainment culture seems debased and unsatisfying, the hope is that our children will create something of greater worth.But it is as if we expect them to create out of nothing, like God, for the encouragement of creativity is in the popular mind, opposed to instruction. There is little sense that creativity must grow out of tradition, even when it is critical of that tradition, and children are scarcely being given the materials on which their creativity could work — C. Sommerville

Anyone who truly cares about children must be repelled by the insistence on ranking them, rating them, and labeling them. Whatever the tests measure is not the sum and substance of any child. The tests do not measure character, spirit, heart, soul, potential. When overused and misused, when attached to high stakes, the tests stifle the very creativity and ingenuity that our society needs most. Creativity and ingenuity stubbornly resist standardization. Tests should be used sparingly to help students and teachers, not to allocate rewards and punishments and not to label children and adults by their scores. — Diane Ravitch

The achievement of freedom is hardly possible without the felt mourning. This ability to mourn, i.e, to give up the illusion of a happy childhood, can restore vitality and creativity if a person is able to experience that he was never loved as a child for what he was, but for his achievements, success and good qualities. And that he sacrificed his childhood for this love, this will shake him very deeply. — Alice Miller

Creativity consists in maintaining a key aspect of the experience of childhood throughout one's life: the capacity to create and recreate the world. Creativity is the omnipotence of the child's mind. — Donald Woods Winnicott

List of Artists Who Created Fantasy Worlds to Try and Cure Bouts of Sadness
1. Italo Calvino
2. Gabriel Garcia Marquez
3. Jim Henson and Jorge Luis Borges - Labyrinths
4. The creator of MySpace
5. Richard Brautigan
6. J.K. Rowling
7. The inventor of the children's toy Lite-Brite
8. Ann Sexton
9. David Foster Wallace
10. Gaugin and the Caribbean
11. Charles Schulz
12. Liam Rector — Shane Jones

Children need nature for the healthy development of their senses, and therefore, for learning and creativity. — Richard Louv

Because of the very nature of the world as it is today, our children receive in school a heavy load of scientific and analytic subjects, so it is in their reading for fun, for pleasure, that they must be guided into creativity. — Madeleine L'Engle

In a universe where all life is in movement, where ever fact seen in perspective is totally engaging, we impose stillness on lively young bodies, distort reality to dullness, make action drudgery. Those who submit - as the majority does - are conditioned to a life lived without their human birthright: work done with the joy and creativity of love.
But what are schools for if not to make children fall so deeply in love with the world that they really want to learn about it? That is the true business of schools. And if they succeed in it, all other desirable developments follow of themselves.
In a proper school, no fact would ever be presented as a soulless one, for the simple reason that there is no such thing. Every facet of reality, discovered where it lives, startles with its wonder, beauty, meaning. — Marjorie Spock

And what is wrong with playing with words? Words love to be played with, just like children or kittens do! — David Almond

And one of the things that I've always loves about children is their vivid, unrestrained, and far-reaching imaginations - the depth and breadth of their creativity. — Kevin Clash

It is the power of questions that embolden us and keep us as expectant children, all the while developing the power of human consciousness. — Dan Sanders

There's probably no better example of the throttling of creativity than the difference between what we observe in a kindergarten classroom and what we observe in a high school classroom," she writes in Teach Your Children Well. "Take a room full of five-year-olds and you will see creativity in all its forms positively flowing around the room. A decade later you will see these same children passively sitting at their desks, half asleep or trying to decipher what will be on the next test. — Madeline Levine

Children, even when very young, have the capacity for inventive thought and decisive action. They have worthwhile ideas. They make perceptive connections. They're individuals from the start: a unique bundle of interests, talents, and preferences. They have something to contribute. They want to be a part of things.
It's up to us to give them the opportunity to express their creativity, explore widely, and connect with their own meaningful work. — Lori McWilliam Pickert

One visit with a child can supply us with enough creativity dust to last for a lifetime ... Visit with children like you're the child you ought to be more often. — Eric Maisel

The magic, the wonder, the mystery and the innocence of a child's heart are the seeds of creativity that will heal the world. — Michael Jackson

The biggest threat to a better life is the desire to keep the future under control - to make the world predictable by reining in creativity and enterprise. Progress as a neat blueprint, with no deviations and no surprise, may work in children's cartoons or utopian novels. But it's just a fantasy. — Virginia Postrel

In our work, the question is, how much you absorb from others. So for me, creativity, is really like a relay race. As children we are handed a baton. Rather than passing it onto the next generation as is, first we need to digest it and make it our own. — Hayao Miyazaki

Most of us are not raised to actively encounter our destiny. We may not know that we have one. As children, we are seldom told we have a place in life that is uniquely ours alone. Instead, we are encouraged to believe that our life should somehow fulfill the expectations of others, that we will (or should) find our satisfactions as they have found theirs. Rather than being taugh to ask ourselves who we are, we are schooled to ask others. We are, in effect, trained to listen to others' versions of ourselves. We are brought up in our life as told to us by someone else! When we survey our lives, seeking to fulfill our creativity, we often see we had a dream that went glimmering because we believed, and those around us believed, that the dream was beyond our reach. Many of us would have been, or at least might have been, done, tried something, if ...
If we had known who we really were. — Julia Cameron

The disobedient child is continuously condemned. The obedient child is, on the other hand, continuously praised. But have you heard of any obedient child having become world-famous in any dimension of creativity? Have you heard of any obedient child who has attained the Nobel prize for anything - literature, peace, science? The obedient child becomes just the common crowd. All that is added to existence is added by the disobedient. — Rajneesh

In an age when schools are facing significant budgetary restraints, there is a greater need than ever to make chess available to as many students as possible. We've assembled the very best in chess education to develop a complete chess curriculum - K through 12. We've designed a program that encourages creativity, instills self-discipline and offers hope and a feeling of accomplishment to millions of children. — Garry Kasparov

The Eeyore Educational System sees childhood as a waste of time, a luxury that society cannot afford ... Put children in school at the earliest age possible; load them down with homework; take away their time, their creativity, their play, their power; then plug them into machines. — Benjamin Hoff

Humans are innately creative, and repressing this instinct can be self-destructive. Everyone had creativity in abundance during childhood when there was little concern with what others thought. As children grow up they are taught to be scared of looking stupid, of what others might say, and how not to stand out from the crowd. Some people think they will get creative again in their retirement, but why wait that long for the joy that creativity can bring you now? I — Joanna Penn

Stupid word, that. Period. In America it means 'full stop,' like in punctuation. That's stupid as well. A period isn't a full stop. It's a new beginning. I don't mean all that creativity, life-giving force, earth-mother stuff, I mean it's a new beginning to the month, relief that you're not pregnant, when you don't have to have a child. — Michelene Wandor

A word is a small song. — Larry Good

Every child should be taught how to read, write and think. — Lailah Gifty Akita

If art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be? Half the world is feminine
why is there resentment at a female-oriented art? Nobody asks The Tale of Genji to be masculine! Women certainly learn a lot from books oriented toward a masculine world. Why is not the reverse also true? Or are men really so afraid of women's creativity (because they are not themselves at the center of creation, cannot bear children) that a woman writer of genius evokes murderous rage, must be brushed aside with a sneer as 'irrelevant'? — May Sarton

Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy, the sense of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence. — Norman Podhoretz

You've got to keep the child alive; you can't create without it. — Joni Mitchell

I am often accused of being childish. I prefer to interpret that as child-like. I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things. I tend to exaggerate and fantasize and embellish. I still listen to instinctual urges. I play with leaves. I skip down the street and run against the wind. I never water my garden without soaking myself. It has been after such times of joy that I have achieved my greatest creativity and produced my best work. — Leo Buscaglia

Ugh, writer's block. The best thing to do is to forget about everything you're trying to do. Get away from your writing station, kick your feet up and relax. Then allow your mind to just wander. Don't stop it. Just let yourself think of anything, no mater how silly the thoughts seem. Remember, not to judge these thoughts. This will open up your creative receptors. You'll begin to think outside the box. Then the good stuff will start racing through you. That's when you start writing! — La Tisha Honor

Even for women without children, trading hours that produce income for hours that produce "only" art seems like a foolish decision. What a loss for the world, though, to have women's voices silenced because art is our last priority. — Holly Robinson

Adults who were hurt as children inevitably exhibit a peculiar strength, a profound inner wisdom, and a remarkable creativity and insight. Deep within them - just beneath the wound - lies a profound spiritual vitality, a quiet knowing, a way of perceiving what is beautiful, right, and true. Since their early experiences were so dark and painful, they have spent much of their lives in search of the gentleness, love, and peace they have only imagined in the privacy of their own hearts. — Wayne Muller

I heard from a swimming coach that how soon children learn to swim depends on how much they trust themselves and the surrounding world. I am convinced that this (self) confidence is the precondition of success in all intellectual activity. It may even have a greater role than believed in the least understood human talent: creativity, that is, artistic creation and scientific discovery. — Kato Lomb

Teachers should not fear going off plan if a better learning opportunity presents itself. Plans are plans, but children are living, breathing, creative people, who deserve to have their questions answered and original ideas explored. — Adele Devine

Sir Ken Robinson's 2008 talk on educational reform - entitled "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" - has now been viewed more than 4 million times. In it Robinson cites the fact that children's scores on standard tests of creativity decline as they grow older and advance through the educational system. He concludes that children start out as curious, creative individuals but are made duller by factory-style schools that spend too much time teaching children academic facts and not enough helping them express themselves. Sir Ken clearly cares greatly about the well-being of children, and he is a superb storyteller, but his arguments about creativity, though beguilingly made, are almost entirely baseless. — Ian Leslie

The patience and ability to work through a long series of steps - to figure things out - is a foundation for the child's creative life later on. — Ann Lewin-Benham

The doorway to health, higher intelligence and inexhaustible creativity lies in your willingness to live from Source. Risk being who you are meant to be; you are more compassionate, colorful, imaginative, visionary, more sensitive than you think. — Lynne Gordon-Mundel

You see a child play, and it is so close to seeing an artist paint, for in play a child says things without uttering a word. You can see how he solves his problems. You can also see what's wrong. Young children, especially, have enormous creativity, and whatever's in them rises to the surface in free play. — Erik Erikson

We have run out of creativity for children and teachers alike in the name of pushing up standards. — Shirley Williams

Inside" Children
Inside each of us are the children we were at each developmental stage.
With regard to our creative dreams, these inside children can prevent us from living them by "acting out" in order to try to get our attention. Your inner 5-year-old is not going to patiently wait as you learn intricate metalworking techniques or study impressionist painting. Yet, your inner 10-year-old may be perfectly suited to learn and observe new skills.
What's really needed is parenting of these inside children so that we bring them to age-appropriate activities. — SARK

I will always know the glory of the beautiful and rare, as they will know security from labour and prayer. As they will hear the laughter of the children they gave life, I will know the torments of the song born under knife. — Roman Payne

We wanted to create a book that would bring children back to the roots of playing and having fun without technology. These
projects are designed to get children away from the screen and encourage them to explore their creativity, follow instructions, and cultivate important skills," explains author and CraftBoxGirls
founder, Lynn Lilly. — Lynn Lilly

The creative impulse can be killed, but it cannot be taught ... What a teacher can do ... in working with children, is to give the flame enough oxygen so that it can burn. As far as I'm concerned, this providing of oxygen is one of the noblest of all vocations. — Madeleine L'Engle

My mother refused to give me coloring books as a child. She probably saved me, Because when you think about it, what a coloring book does is completely kill creativity. — David Lynch

The great enemy of creativity is fear. When we're fearful, we freeze up - like a nine-year-old who won't draw pictures, for fear everybody will laugh. Creativity has a lot to do with a willingness to take risks. Think about how children play. They run around the playground, they trip, they fall, they get up and run some more. They believe everything will be all right. They feel capable; they let go. Good businesspeople behave in a similar way: they lose $15 million, gain $20 million, lose $30 million and earn it back. If that isn't playing, I don't know what is! — Faith Ringgold

Several elements of the ADD mind favor creativity ... As mentioned earlier, the term 'attention deficit' is a misnomer. It is a matter of attention inconsistency. While it is true that the ADD mind wanders when not engaged, it is also the case that the ADD mind fastens on to its subject fiercely when it is engaged. A child with ADD may sit for hours meticulously putting together a model airplane. — Edward Hallowell

On this simple unit-system [of building blocks] ruled on the low table-top all these forms were combined by the child into imaginative patter. Design was recreation! ... The virtue of all this lay in the awakening of the childmind to rhythmic structure in Nature - giving the child a sense of innate cause-and-effect otherwise far beyond child-comprehension. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Women certainly learn a lot from books oriented toward a masculine world. Why is not the reverse also true? Or are men really so afraid of women's creativity (because they are not themselves at the center of creation, cannot bear children) that a woman writer of genius evokes murderous rage, must be brushed aside with a sneer as "irrelevant"? When — May Sarton

Daily I witness my spiritual betters in my own children. When the snows come, I see ice crystals falling, slick roads, and rising heat bills. They sit at the window in awe of God's creativity. When nighttime falls and the stars shine, I muse about burning balls of hydrogen. They join the dancing of the spheres in celebration of God who made them. When our family sits down to eat, I envision a cluttered kitchen and dishes needing to be washed. They see daily bread delivered by their faithful heavenly Father. — R.C. Sproul Jr.

I think I have become a better writer since having children. It improves creativity, particularly because once you have children it makes you realise the story isn't about you. — Louise Doughty

Creativity is one of the most important brain functions in developing youth. It is the ultimate road to invention. I believe it is really important to both nurture and encourage this in children - and adults, too! — Sarah Michelle Gellar

Creation and Free Will are constantly moving, hand in hand, like children traveling along a path full of impulses and inspirations.Through the use of the Dragonflame philosophy they become superior artistic beings able to enjoy and share the fruits of creative labor. — Lawren Leo

I've been collecting since college, .. When we're children, we're taught to draw in the lines, use certain colors. In this art, the talent and the creativity we had as children hasn't been squashed. The early stuff is still there. — Beverly L. Kaye

If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society. — Piaget

So the best defense against porn, for every member of our family, is a full life--the kind of life that technology cannot provide on its own. This is why the most important things we will do to prevent porn from taking over our own lives and our children's lives have nothing to do with sex. A home where wisdom and courage come first; where our central spaces are full of satisfying, demanding opportunities for creativity; where we have regular breaks from technology and opportunities for deep rest and refreshment (where devices "sleep" somewhere other than our bedrooms and where both adults and children experience the satisfactions of learning in thick, embodied ways rather than thin, technological ways); where we've learned to manage boredom and where even our car trips are occasions for deep and meaningful conversation--this is the kind of home that can equip all of us with an immune system strong enough to resist pornography's foolishness. — Andy Crouch

For years to come the debris of a convulsed world will beset our steps. It will require a purpose stronger than any man and worthy of all men to calm and inspirit us. A sane society whose riches are happy children, men and women, beautiful with peace and creative activity, is not going to be ordained for us. We must make it ourselves. — Helen Keller

Inspiring passion in children for books, and the world of imagination and creativity fuelled by them, is a fundamental reason for why the Children's Laureate post exists. — Anthony Browne

Stress reduction, greater physical health, a deeper sense of spirit, more creativity, a sense of play, even a safer life-these are the rewards that await a family then it invites more nature into children's lives. — Richard Louv

Leaves lift trees. — Larry Good

Children's play is a way to express innate, spontaneous creativity. — Iben Dissing Sandahl

I kept asking myself: What do these people with strong relationships, parents with deep connections to their children, teachers nurturing creativity and learning, clergy walking with people through faith, and trusted leaders have in common? The answer was clear: They recognize the power of emotion and they're not afraid to lean in to discomfort. — Brene Brown

Creations, whether they are children, poems, or organizations, take on a life of their own. — Starhawk

The well-intentioned mothers who don't want their children polluted by fairy tales would not only deny them their childhood, with its high creativity, but they would have them conform to the secular world, with its dirty devices. The world of fairy tale, fantasy, myth, is inimical to the secular world, and in total opposition to it, for it is interested not in limited laboratory proofs but in truth. — Madeleine L'Engle

Coding is today's language of creativity. All our children deserve a chance to become creators instead consumers of computer science. — Maria Klawe

I saw as a teacher how, if you take that spark of learning that those children have, and you ignite it, you can take a child from any background to a lifetime of creativity and accomplishment. — Paul Wellstone

A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely but by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature and can then draw him at every attitude ... — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The creative adult is the child who survived after the world tried killing them, making them grown up. The creative adult is the child who survived the blandness of schooling, the unhelpful words of bad teachers, and the nay-saying ways of the world. The creative adult is in essence simply that, a child. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I knew naturally as a child not to forfeit my creativity to a world that's all laid out for me. I'll look at everything around me and vow to keep in mind that alla this is just someone's idea. It could have just as well been mine. — Ani DiFranco

If I had influence with the good fairy ... I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life. — Rachel Carson