Creativity is contagious. Pass it on. — Albert Einstein
Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. – Albert Einstein
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. – 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
The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates. – Oscar Wilde
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. – Scott Adams
Another word for creativity is courage – George Prince
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity. – Charles Mingus
Creativity – like human life itself – begins in darkness. – Julia Cameron
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
Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction. - Pablo Picasso
The chief enemy of creativity is “good” sense. – Pablo Picasso
I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them. ~Pablo Picasso
Creativity is the ability to see relationships where none exist. -Thomas Disch
Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun. – Mary Lou Cook
I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones. - John Cage
Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality overcomes everything. – George Lois
I will tell you what I have learned myself. For me, a long five or six mile walk helps. And one must go alone and every day.” – Brenda Ueland – author of the excellent book ‘If you want to write - A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit’ - see more quotes from that book here.
The imagination needs moodling,–long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering. - Brenda Ueland
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
A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something. – Frank Capra
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. — Victor Hugo
An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. – Edwin Land
And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. – Sylvia Plath
But out of limitations comes creativity. – Debbie Allen
Chaos in the world brings uneasiness, but it also allows the opportunity for creativity and growth. - Tom Barrett
The highest prize we can receive for creative work is the joy of being creative. Creative effort spent for any other reason than the joy of being in that light filled space, love, god, whatever we want to call it, is lacking in integrity. . .– Marianne Williamson
Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it. – Dee Hock
Creativity is a great motivator because it makes people interested in what they are doing. Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea. Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone. Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting. – Edward de Bono
There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns. — Edward de Bono
As competition intensifies, the need for creative thinking increases. It is no longer enough to do the same thing better . . . no longer enough to be efficient and solve problems — Edward de Bono
It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all. — Edward de Bono
Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better. – John Updike
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, Flight to Arras, 1942
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” ~Antoine De Saint Exupery
My alphabet starts with this letter called yuzz. It’s the letter I use to spell yuzz-a-ma-tuzz. You’ll be sort of surprised what there is to be found once you go beyond ‘Z’ and start poking around! ~Dr. Seuss
Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try! ~Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea. ~Francis Bacon
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric. — Bertrand Russell
You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. ~Mark Twain
Don’t expect anything original from an echo. ~Author Unknown
Things are only impossible until they’re not. ~Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation
When you are describing,
A shape, or sound, or tint;
Don’t state the matter plainly,
But put it in a hint;
And learn to look at all things,
With a sort of mental squint.
~Lewis Carroll
Trust that little voice in your head that says “Wouldn’t it be interesting if…” And then do it. ~Duane Michals, “More Joy of Photography”
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.
~Emily Dickinson, Poems
You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. — Maya Angelou
By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The non-existent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. - Nikos Kazantzakis
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. ~Albert Szent-Györgyi
I am not afraid – I was born to do this. - Joan of Arc
“I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.” -Pearl S. Buck
“It’s not about breaking the rules. It is about abandoning the concept of rules altogether” - Paul Lemberg
“Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.” -Leo Burnett
“Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.” - Martha Graham
“…before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World test everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve moved toward that dream. It’s the point at which most people give up. It’s the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one ‘dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.’” -Paulo Coehlo
“Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.” - Erica Jong
If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced. — Vincent van Gogh
“We all operate in two contrasting modes, which might be called open and closed. The open mode is more relaxed, more receptive, more exploratory, more democratic, more playful and more humorous. The closed mode is the tighter, more rigid, more hierarchical, more tunnel-visioned. Most people, unfortunately spend most of their time in the closed mode. Not that the closed mode cannot be helpful. If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time for considering alternative strategies. When you charge the enemy machine-gun post, don’t waste energy trying to see the funny side of it. Do it in the “closed” mode. But the moment the action is over, try to return to the “open” mode—to open your mind again to all the feedback from our action that enables us to tell whether the action has been successful, or whether further action is need to improve on what we have done. In other words, we must return to the open mode, because in that mode we are the most aware, most receptive, most creative, and therefore at our most intelligent.” -John Cleese
“The things we fear most in organizations—fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances—re the primary sources of creativity.” — Margaret J. Wheatley
“Don’t worry, be crappy. Revolutionary means you ship and then test… Lots of things made the first Mac in 1984 a piece of crap – but it was a revolutionary piece of crap.” -Guy Kawasaki
I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn’t mean they’re going to make it. – Rita Dove
All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. — Albert Camus
I can always be distracted by love, but eventually I get horny for my creativity. – Gilda Radner
When we engage in what we are naturally suited to do, our work takes on the quality of play and it is play that stimulates creativity. – Linda Naiman
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
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game. — Goethe
Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has had an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference. — Nolan Bushnell
The key question isn’t “What fosters creativity?” But it is why in God’s name isn’t everyone creative? Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? I think therefore a good question might be not why do people create? But why do people not create or innovate? We have got to abandon that sense of amazement in the face of creativity, as if it were a miracle if anybody created anything. — Abraham Maslow
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. — John Steinbeck
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, 3M President
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