Quotes & Sayings About Creativity

The dissonance that I felt daily flew in the face of what Silicon Valley says about itself: that it is a meritocracy, that it values intelligence and creativity, that everyone has a fair shot if they just work hard enough. This was true only if you were technical, and even that may not always be enough: in the age of the social network, who you know and who your friends were was becoming increasingly important. — Katherine Losse

If you cannot live with hope and create with intention or be kind to a stranger, bury your head. You are not living at all. — Dawn Garcia

If we want to resist the powers that threaten to suppress intellectual and individual freedom, we must be clear what is at stake," he said. "Without such freedom there would have been no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Newton, no Faraday, no Pasteur, no Lister." Freedom was a foundation for creativity. — Walter Isaacson

The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can. — Julian Barnes

When hip-hop was born she had no commercial home, and was an invention of beautiful creativity. Born from a beautiful struggle, today she is mostly a 'ratchet' bitch spitting nonsense from her pimp's mansion. — T.F. Hodge

Others inspire us, information feeds us, practice improves our performance, but we need quiet time to figure things out, to emerge with new discoveries, to unearth original answers. — Ester Buchholz

Innovation is the process of turning ideas into manufacturable and marketable form. — Watts Humphrey

Knock-offs may look good, but they never last as long as the real thing. — N.M. Silber

Unshackled by strict yet arbitrary, misguided norms, outcasts can be, look, act, and associate however they want. And in this ever conformist, cookie-cutter, magazine-celebrity-worshipping, creativity-stifling society, the innovation, courage, and differences of the cafeteria fringe are vital to America's culture and progress. Which is why we must celebrate them. — Alexandra Robbins

No matter how much you try and make your surroundings suitable for creativity, if the enviornment inside of you isn't creatively healthy then you won't be able to make the art you want. Being in tune with yourself and your inner truth, being at peace in there, is the best way to nurture your creativity. Then you can even make a bad enviornment a good one. — Gerard Way

The arts can open the door to the imagination, pushing the envelope of how peace can be created. It takes courage to take this kind of risk, and courage is what we all need to create a better world. — Wayne Shorter

There is no ritual that enhances creativity other than just starting. — John Hodgman

Alexander McQueen's heartbreakingly premature death, at the height of his creativity and influence, has robbed the fashion world of a soaring and unique talent. — Hamish Bowles

Creativity is a quality that we give to every activity that we do. — Rajneesh

Lots of creativity is and should be solitary. — Geoff Mulgan

I've always thought my creative life began the moment my mother called me Twyla. — Twyla Tharp

The blood of my motherland waters a magic plant that cures all ills. That plant is art, and sometimes art needs corruption as a kind of fertilizer — Alfred De Musset

Intellectual growth is when you surpass the barrier of puerility, puzzling people with your dazzling creativity. — Michael Bassey Johnson

The thoughts we choose to think are the tools we use to paint the canvas of our lives. — Louise Hay

The mainspring of creativity appears to be the same tendency which we discover so deeply as the curative force in psychotherapy - man's tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities. — Carl R. Rogers

I wanted to define the vocabulary of a wedding both visually and intellectually. The book is about more than weddings or wedding dresses. It's a metaphor for women's lives, their creativity. — Vera Wang

The lash may force men to physical labor, it cannot force them to spiritual creativity. — Sholem Asch

A game may be as integral to a culture, as true an object of human aesthetic appreciation, as admirable a product of creativity as a folk art or a style of music; and, as such, it is quite as worthy of study. — Michael Dummett

A big part of (Janice) Marturano's success in bringing mindfulness to this unlikely venue was that she talked about it not as a "spiritual" exercise but instead as something that made you a "better leader" and "more focused," and that enhanced your "creativity and innovation." She didn't even like the term "stress reduction." "For a lot of us," she said, "we think that having stress in our lives isn't a bad thing. It gives us an edge. — Dan Harris

Tomorrow is no hazardous affair, a day like any other day: tomorrow is the result of many yesterdays and comes with a potent, cumulative effect. I am tomorrow what I chose to be yesterday and the day before. It is not possible that tomorrow I may negate and nullify everything that led me to this present moment. — Henry Miller

Creativity has often been analogized as "Thinking outside of the box. — Pearl Zhu

I have toured with Klemens Marktl, playing his original compositions and arrangements. He is a wonderful drummer, a writer possessing a high degree of creativity, and an assured band leader. — Joe Locke

Don't go through life with a closed mind. Allow innovations and creativity to flow. We should always challenge ourselves to excel in more ways than one. Be open to ideas or suggestions on how to improve. And, the chances of reaching your goals will increase enormously. — Amaka Imani Nkosazana

Trying to teach creativity is the major hoax of our time along with the Iraq war and plastic surgery"
~ Snarky comment of Clive from "The River Swimmer" (pg 47) — Jim Harrison

Venture deep into the wilderness of lost thought to the point that you physically shiver with apprehension, and there you will find creativity — Carl Henegan

Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers. — Bob Hoffman

We must keep in mind Edward Said's important warning that the first reality for thinking creatively (and for us, theologically) about exile is that it is a form of disaster and trauma that is inseparably connected to human actions related to power, dominance, and brutality:

'To think of exile as beneficial, as a spur to humanism or to creativity, is to belittle its mutliations.' (p. 21) — Daniel L. Smith-Christopher

To be fully human is to be wild. Wild is the strange pull and whispering wisdom. It's the gentle nudge and the forceful ache. It is your truth, passed down from the ancients, and the very stream of life in your blood. Wild is the soul where passion and creativity reside, and the quickening of your heart. Wild is what is real, and wild is your home. — Victoria Erickson

Take No as a question. — Mechai Viravaidya

If suffering can be transformed into creativity ... I want to try it. — Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

When I listen to music from different eras, I sense different things. The 1940s music, there's so much optimism and romance, maybe because they just solved the biggest problem on Earth at that time - World War II. In the 1960s, there was so much creativity and innovation in sound. — Eric Betzig

Creativity is every company's first driver. It's where everything starts, where energy and forward motion originate. Without that first charge of creativity, nothing else can take place. — Nolan Bushnell

Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. It is a process; it's not random. — Ken Robinson

If my colleagues stop eating donuts and are more active, it saves me money on next year's insurance premium, and I get to work with people who have more energy and creativity each day. Yet most organizations fail to make health a cultural priority. Instead, they treat healthcare like any other expense. — Tom Rath

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

Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the art of creation can be accomplished. Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated. The whole of the mind must lie wide open if we are to get the sense that the — Virginia Woolf

What I would say to filmmakers, if I may be so bold or so arrogant, is to draw inspiration from other filmmakers, but go to the place in your own gut where everything is nothing. That's a very Zen thing to say, but that place of nothing is where real creativity comes out of. — Lawrence Bender

Creativity is an input to innovation and change is the output from innovation. — Braden Kelley

If you go to a master to study and learn the techniques, you diligently follow all the instructions the master puts upon you. But then comes the time for using the rules in your own way and not being bound by them ... You can actually forget the rules because they have been assimilated. You are an artist. Your own innocence now is of one who has become an artist, who has been, as it were, transmuted ... You can't have creativity unless you leave behind the bounded, the fixed, all the rules. — Joseph Campbell

To possess and exercise omniscience is to never have sensed temperature, experienced a single emotion, or practiced a single vice. It is to have never been amazed, concerned, analytical, or sympathetic. By exercising omniscience, an Omni-maximum being could not move, be moved, or inspired. Such a being could not interfere, empathise, interject, alter, adjust, or give advice. Ever. Such a being could not devise a plan, hear music, imagine a story, or recognise art or deviancy in any guise, for it could never differentiate creativity from cold reality. Such a being could not know doubt, desire, success, or failure. It could not, therefore, know itself, and if it is incapable of that, then it is incapable of experiencing pleasure. — John Zande

I told my students the other day in class, which is about the spirituality and creativity as much as it is about music. I said, 'If you're walking down the street and you see a baby carriage, and there's a baby in the carriage; you look down and your eyes meet the eyes of the baby. The baby looks at you: That's the kind of moment you're in when you're playing. — Charlie Haden

Cowardice is the most terrible of vices. — Mikhail Bulgakov

memory is primarily an imaginative process. In fact, learning, memory, and creativity are the same fundamental process directed with a different focus," says Buzan. "The art and science of memory is about developing the capacity to quickly create images that link disparate ideas. — Joshua Foer

I believe that an artist working for and representing the Kingdom of God should do the best of their ability to show and prove the depth, life, newness, creativity, truth and excitement of their Heavenly Father through the work that is set before them. — Daniel Smith

Creativity doesn't flourish in an atmosphere of despotism, coercion and fear. — P.D. James

We are bodies which think, and we're at home with steampunk because it is an ethos of design and creativity which acknowledges the humanly physical: that which we can understand with our fingers. — Nick Harkaway

TEN GUIDEPOSTS FOR WHOLEHEARTED LIVING 1. Cultivating authenticity: letting go of what people think 2. Cultivating self-compassion: letting go of perfectionism 3. Cultivating a resilient spirit: letting go of numbing and powerlessness 4. Cultivating gratitude and joy: letting go of scarcity and fear of the dark 5. Cultivating intuition and trusting faith: letting go of the need for certainty 6. Cultivating creativity: letting go of comparison 7. Cultivating play and rest: letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth 8. Cultivating calm and stillness: letting go of anxiety as a lifestyle 9. Cultivating meaningful work: letting go of self-doubt and "supposed to" 10. Cultivating laughter, song, and dance: letting go of being cool and "always in control — Brene Brown

The straight line is godless and immoral. The straight line is not a creative line, it is a duplicating line, an imitating line. — Friedensreich Hundertwasser

How to earn a viable standard of living while giving vent to their desire to perform creative activities is the quintessential challenge for modern humans. Some people settle for jobs filled with drudgery and in their free time immerse themselves in hobbies that provide them with personal happiness. Other people prefer to find work that makes them happy, even if this occupation requires them to live a more modest standard of living. The greater their impulse is for curiosity and creativity, the less likely that a person will exchange personal happiness for economic security. — Kilroy J. Oldster

The imagination doesn't crop annually like a reliable fruit tree. The writer has to gather whatever's there: sometimes too much, sometimes too little, sometimes nothing at all. And in the years of glut there is always a slatted wooden tray in some cool, dark attic, which the writer nervously visits from time to time; and yes, oh dear, while he's been hard at work downstairs, up in the attic there are puckering skins, warning spots, a sudden brown collapse and the sprouting of snowflakes. What can he do about it? — Julian Barnes

You can't just give someone a creativity injection. You have to create an environment for curiosity and a way to encourage people and get the best out of them. — Ken Robinson

Creativity is our birthright. It is an integral part of being human, as basic as walking, talking and thinking. — John Daido Loori

The genius inside a person wants activity. It's connected to the stars; it's connected to a spark and it wants to burn and it wants to make and it wants to create and it has gifts to give. That is the nature of inner genius. — Michael Meade

Nothing prompts creativity like poverty, a feeling of hopelessness, and a bit of panic. — Catherine Tate

I'm always throwing out ideas, so it's not creativity, it's just volume. — Ben Huh

BROWSED this far into the magazine, you've likely noticed something unusual about this issue: it has three consecutive covers. Why? Good question. The theme of The Atlantic 's annual Ideas Issue this year is creativity - which is a hard concept to define, let alone to illustrate. We could have gone with an illuminated lightbulb, or photographed Brad Pitt painting at an easel, but those options didn't seem very ... creative. — Anonymous

To most observers, innovation is a solitary process that requires creativity and genius, perhaps even greatness. It can't, in their view, be managed or predicted, just hoped for and, perhaps, facilitated. But for me innovation was and still is more than that. It was a battle in the marketplace between innovators or attackers trying to make money by changing the order of things, and defenders protecting their cash flow. — Richard J. Foster

Each of us is born with two contradictory sets of instructions: a conservative tendency, made up of instincts for self-preservation, self-aggrandizement, and saving energy, and an expansive tendency made up of instincts for exploring, for enjoying novelty and risk-the curiosity that leads to creativity belongs to this set. But whereas the first tendency requires little encouragement or support from outside to motivate behaviour, the second can wilt if not cultivated. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Nature is good for all of us. When we're exposed to trees and other natural settings - even within the city, it fosters creativity. — David Livermore

The point of creativity is to express and challenge yourself, to make meaning, to embrace your life. — Peggy Orenstein

One is either an artist or one is not. It is not something one becomes. It is something that one is from birth. We do not study to be artists. We study to become more proficient. To understand more. — Edward Swift

Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative place where no one else has ever been. — Alan Alda

Don't think about making art ... — Andy Warhol

Creativity is the art of concealing your sources. — Coco Chanel

Distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything. — Jonah Lehrer

I don't believe in the creativity of the curator. I don't think that the exhibition-maker has brilliant ideas around which the works of artists must fit. Instead, the process always starts with a conversation, in which I ask the artists what their unrealized projects are, and then the task is to find the means to realize them.
pg 10 — Hans Ulrich Obrist

No one's fated or doomed to love anyone.
The accidents happen, we're not heroines,
they happen in our lives like car crashes,
books that change us, neighborhoods
we move into and come to love.
Tristan and Isolde is scarcely the story,
women at least should know the difference
between love and death. No poison cup,
no penance. Merely a notion that the tape-recorder
should have caught some ghost of us: that tape-recorder
not merely played but should have listened to us,
and could instruct those after us:
this we were, this is how we tried to love,
and these are the forces they had ranged against us,
and these are the forces we had ranged within us,
within us and against us, against us and within us. — Adrienne Rich

There is a deep connection between technical, scientific, and artistic creativity. — Barbara Oakley

Infinite Mind will put ideas into your mind, words into your mouth, creativity into your hands, boundless opportunity before you, and guiding light on your way. — Eric Butterworth

The one true mark of a saint of God is the inner creativity that flows from being totally surrendered to Jesus Christ. — Oswald Chambers

Above all, we are coming to understand that the arts incarnate the creativity of a free people. When the creative impulse cannot flourish, when it cannot freely select its methods and objects, when it is deprived of spontaneity, then society severs the root of art. — John F. Kennedy

All too often, legacy management practices reflexively perpetuate the past - by over-weighting the views of long-tenured executives, by valuing conformance more highly than creativity and by turning tired industry nostrums into sacred truths. — Gary Hamel

...people who struggle against tyranny are more psychologically healthy than those who are docile and simply conform to current ways of thinking...there is much evidence that some of the most creative people in history were driven individuals who were terribly unhappy and out of sync with their social context. Creativity itself is a form of deviant behavior that requires individuals to break from usual assumptions and understandings in developing entirely new perspectives and approaches. — David Mechanic

Outrageous behavior, also known as the lunatic fringe, is the seed bed of innovation and creativity. — Joel Salatin

Imagination should be used, not to escape reality but to create it. — Colin Wilson

Einstein's secretary once said that if Einstein were born among the polar bears, he would still be Einstein. But unless polar bears were well versed in theoretical physics, that is not true. Einstein would not be Einstein. Which is not to take anything away from Einstein, or the polar bears, but simply to point out that he was part of a creative ecology, and trying to isolate him from it is not only silly but futile. — Eric Weiner

I'm happy to have L.A.M.B. participate in the PSP accessories show as I've always loved designing bags and accessories, It's all about creativity at the end of the day, whether you're talking about fashion, technology or music, and that's what my L.A.M.B. bags are about. — Gwen Stefani

I think every part of our lives begins at an energetic level. Like creativity. You can't separate anything from that archetypal process. — Caroline Myss

If young people had love, hope, true education, the arts, full and meaningful lives they won't join gangs. My life since leaving the gang and drugs has been directed to making positive what it means to be Chicano, human, man, woman, and on how to draw out the imagination and creativity that all people have. — Luis J. Rodriguez

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

To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it. — Osho

Great depth of beingness and creativity often come with great woundedness. — Kathryn V. White

To achieve lasting literature, fictional or factual, a writer needs perceptive vision, absorptive capacity, and creative strength. — Lawrence Clark Powell

There is a new science of complexity which says that the link between cause and effect is increasingly difficult to trace; that change (planned or otherwise) unfolds in non-linear ways; that paradoxes and contradictions abound; and that creative solutions arise out of diversity, uncertainty and chaos. — Andy Hargreaves

All the while that Jean was listening to him, he was vaguely conscious that what gives literature its reality is the result of work accomplished by the human spirit, no matter what the material facts that may have stimulated it (a walk, a night of love, a social drama), of a sort of discovery in the world of the spirit, of the emotions, made by the human intelligence, so that the value of a book is never in the material presented by the writer, but in the nature of the operation he performs upon it. — Marcel Proust

Rivers have what man most respects and longs for in his own life and thought-a capacity for renewal and replenishment, continual energy, creativity,cleansing.
J.M. Kauffman — Henry C. Duggan III

Collect books, even if you don't plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library. — John Waters

We are all creative, from the mother adding an extra pinch of garlic to her meal, to the entrepreneur launching a brand new product, to the business consultant who creates a more effective way for corporate departments to communicate. The call requires creativity. — Shannon Tanner

Forget about being an expert or a professional, and wear your amateurism (your heart, your love) on your sleeve. Share what you love, and the people who love the same things will find you. — Austin Kleon

Creativity is in everyone; it just manifests itself differently with each person. My CPA, for example, is one of the most creative people I know. — Ron Miriello

In Israel, a land lacking in natural resources, we learned to appreciate our greatest national advantage: our minds. Through creativity and innovation, we transformed barren deserts into flourishing fields and pioneered new frontiers in science and technology. — Shimon Peres

Be creative, be innovative, consume what everyone consumes and make it fresh! — Kevin Focke

Every man in creating the beautiful appearance of the dream worlds is a perfect artist. — Friedrich Nietzsche

My eyes drift down the cliffs that rise abruptly from the beach and to the fishing boats resting by the shore. There is a comforting rhythm to the waves. They rise and swell, demanding full attention, only to subside to a faint whisper. I watch the interplay of sand and water in a cavernous outlet beneath the bluff. (p.97) — Angella M. Nazarian

Creativity is a state of mind, a way of being, and it comes from a sacred place within. — Bonnie Kelso