quotations about creativity
The search for knowledge about creativity is linked with magic, the demonic, and the divine, yet such knowledge is at the forefront of rational inquiry. Creativity is paradoxical and complex, and the most steadfast investigator is constantly beset with feelings of awe and a sense of mystery as he pursues his inquiry. Creativity encompasses the magical incantations and drawings of primitive man, the appearance of new forms in nature, and the evil genius of Faust. It is a human capacity but it seems to transcend human capacities.
ALBERT ROTHENBERG
The Creativity Question
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
In creating, the only hard thing's to begin;
A grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak,
If you've once found the way you've achieved the grand stroke.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Emerson
Without freedom, there is no creation.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
On Freedom
Creativity is a conceptual, abstracted system. It is not tangible, but many of its products are. Creative people work in the tangible world, producing real products.
WILLIAM G. COVINGTON
JR., Creativity and General Systems Theory
Creativity ... consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know.
GEORGE KNELLER
attributed, Quotes about Creativity
God rested when he had left his creative power to itself in man.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Reflections
Creativity denotes a person's capacity to produce new or original ideas, insights, inventions, or artistic products, which are accepted by experts as being of scientific, aesthetic, social, or technical value.
MARGARET BODEN
Dimensions of Creativity
The creative personality never remains fixed on the first world it discovers. It never resigns itself to anything.
ANAIS NIN
The Novel of the Future
As the world of creativeness finds itself at the outset placed in the midst of opposition and bound at the same time to proceed on its own course, then it becomes clear that this new world when it becomes a whole and governs all cannot remain permanently within the realm of such stubborn opposites: it must, without giving up its independence, yet return to the world which it had left behind and must attempt to penetrate into it; it must do this most of all on account of the fact that its own development is at stake, for only by some such understanding with things outside itself only by means of a struggle with its oppositions can the life of creativeness in man find its way from the great outlines of its ideal-plan to a full and essential development.
RUDOLF EUCKEN
Knowledge and Life
Creative power is that receptive attitude of expectancy which makes a mold into which the plastic and as yet undifferentiated substance can flow and take the desired form.
THOMAS TROWARD
The Creative Process in the Individual
Creativity ... is in reality the ability to reach inside yourself and drag forth from your very soul an idea.
LOU DORFSMAN
attributed, Wisdom for the Soul
Creativity is part of what makes us human. Our nearest relatives, chimpanzees and other primates, are often quite intelligent but never reach these high levels of performance. And although advanced "artificially intelligent" computer programs hold the world title in chess, and can crunch through mounds of data and identify patterns invisible to the human eye, they still cannot master everyday creative skills.
ROBERT KEITH SAWYER
Explaining Creativity
Creativity is not to be located in one state of mind, one room, one type of person, one individual. Rather it lies in the transition points between different ways of thinking. If we close the doors, we will never hear the full story.
CHRIS BILTON
Management and Creativity
Creativity means not copying.
FERRAN ADRIÀ
Washington Post, Oct. 11, 2011
Creativity is Evolution...
Fashioning a growing idea,
Designing progress to arrive at a pier.
ALFREDA DOYLE
Poetry about Creativity
To me, creativity is a vision and the actualization of that vision. This vision is a unit; it is complete and pregnant. Just as night gives birth to day, the seed to a plant, an ovum to a child; so too a creative vision gives birth indefinitely and its actualization produces scientific, artistic or religious forms.
A. REZA ARASTEH & J. D. ARASTEH
Creativity in the Life-cycle
The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Forbes Magazine, Sep. 15, 1974
Creativity follows its own rules.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
The Butlerian Jihad