CREATIVITY QUOTES

Here's a selection of great quotes on creativity.  The ones I am particularly fond of are near the end.


“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.” --Charles Mingus
    
“Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.” -- Pablo Picasso

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” --Steve Jobs

“Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.”  -- Albert Einstein

“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.”-- George Bernard Shaw
    
“Sometimes you've got to let everything go - purge yourself. If you are unhappy with anything . . . whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you'll find that when you're free, your true creativity, your true self comes out.” -- Tina Turner
      
“No great thing is created suddenly.” -- Epictetus
    
“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”  -- Scott Adams
    
“It is better to create than to be learned, creating is the true essence of life”  -- Barthold Georg Niebuhr

“Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.” -- Edward de Bono

“Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.” — William James

“The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things-ancient history, nineteenth century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, hog futures. Because he never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen six minutes later, or six months, or six years. But he has faith that it will happen.” — Carl Ally

 “Listen to anyone with an original idea, no matter how absurd it may sound at first. If you put fences around people, you get sheep. Give people the room they need.” — William McKnight

“You write your first draft with your heart and you re-write with your head. The first key to writing is to write, not to think.” — Sean Connery

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“I shall become a master in this art only after a great deal of practice.” — Erich Fromm

“Because of their courage, their lack of fear, they (creative people) are willing to make silly mistakes. The truly creative person is one who can think crazy; such a person knows full well that many of his great ideas will prove to be worthless. The creative person is flexible; he is able to change as the situation changes, to break habits, to face indecision and changes in conditions without undue stress. He is not threatened by the unexpected as rigid, inflexible people are.” — Frank Goble

“The creative person is willing to live with ambiguity. He doesn’t need problems solved immediately and can afford to wait for the right ideas.” — Abe Tannenbaum

There is no use trying,” said Alice. “One can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” — Lewis Carroll

THOSE I CALL MY NINE "FAVORITES"

1. “The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done - men who are creative, inventive and discoverers”  -- Jean Piaget

2. “There's room for everybody on the planet to be creative and conscious if you are your own person. If you're trying to be like somebody else, then there isn't.” -- Tori Amos

3. “The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.” — Alan Alda

4. “Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.” -- Ray Bradbury

5. “The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.” -- Oscar Wilde

6. “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

7. “Truly creative people care a little about what they have done, and a lot about what they are doing. Their driving focus is the life force that surges in them now.” — Alan Cohen

8. “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.” — John Maynard Keynes

9. “Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” — Walt Disney