quotations about creativity
Creativity is never just doing something different. It is doing something different that is significant at that precise point in the cultural tradition.
MARK AMSLER
The Languages of Creativity
Creativity cannot always be attained at will. There are fluctuations that occur in the process. A certain amount of down time is necessary for the creative process to run its course. Putting the right things into the brain is preparation so that once those down times take place, the intuitive part of the brain has something to draw on for inspiration and content.
WILLIAM G. COVINGTON
JR., Creativity and General Systems Theory
My muse must come to me on union time.
GEORGE BALANCHINE
"Balanchine Said", The New Yorker, January 26, 2009
Creative life is characterized by spontaneous mutability; it brings forth unknown issues, impossible to preconceive.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Selected Essays
I am a natural creator. Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy--pure creative energy. It is my birthright to co-create my life and my experience. My dreams come from God. The power to fulfill my dreams is God given. There is an indwelling, underlying creative power infusing all of life, including ourselves. When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the Great Creator working with us and within us.
JULIA CAMERON
Heart Steps
Creativity is the joy of not knowing it all.
ERNIE J. ZELINSKI
The Joy of Not Knowing It All: Profiting from Creativity at Work or Play
You can always make up in creativity what you lack in good fortune. Playing the game of life is like playing poker. Playing three aces badly won't get you as far as playing a terrible hand well.
ERNIE J. ZELINSKI
The Lazy Person's Guide to Success: How to Get What You Want Without Killing Yourself for It
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
Playboy, Dec. 1968
Never create anything, it will be misinterpreted, it will chain you and follow you for the rest of your life.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Creativity is the soul of the true scholar.
NNAMDI AZIKIWE
speech, Nov. 11, 1934
Creativity is discovering the elegant patterns of meaning across diverse areas of our knowledge and experience.
MICHAEL A. WEST
Developing Creativity in Organizations
Creativity is the steam that powers the locomotive of progress.
DANNY COX
Leadership When the Heat's On
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
ERICH FROMM
attributed, 1,001 Pearls of Wisdom
Creativity perpetually invents itself.
PAUL PALNIK
Creative Consciousness
Enjoyment of the work consists in participation in the creative state of the artist.
MARTIN HEIDEGGER
Nietzsche
Creativity exists in the searching even more than in the finding or being found.
STEPHEN NACHMANOVITCH
Free Play
Man owes his success to his creativity. No one doubts the need for it. It is most useful in good times and essential in bad.
EDWARD DE BONO
Lateral Thinking for Management
We are ourselves creations. We are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves. This is the God-force extending itself through us. Creativity is God's gift to us. Using creativity is our gift back to God.
JULIA CAMERON
Heart Steps
Too academic an education can inhibit the workings of the creative mind.
MARGARET DRABBLE
The Paris Review, fall/winter 1978
The chief enemy of creativity is "good" taste.
PABLO PICASSO
attributed, Wisdom for the Soul