Explore Quotes by Jonah Lehrer

Every creative story is different. And yet every creative story is the same: There was nothing, now there is something. It's almost like magic.

I want to give people theories, I want to expose them to scientific stories that force them to re-evaluate the way they use these three pounds of meat inside their head.

What you discover when you look at creativity from the perspective of the brain is that it is universal. We're all creative all of the time, we can't help but be creative.

If you're trying to be more creative, one of the most important things you can do is increase the volume and diversity of the information to which you are exposed.

Children can't help but create: they need to put their mind on the page, they want to paint, to sculpt, to write short stories.

Creativity is not a trait that we inherit in our genes or a blessing bestowed by the angels. It's a skill.

I always wanted to be a scientist, I always thought I'd be a scientist, that was the narrative I was carrying around. I worked in a neuroscience lab as an undergraduate and then after, almost five years in total, but I realized I just wasn't good at science. I didn't have the discipline for it.

Creativity is a spark. It can be excruciating when we're rubbing two rocks together and getting nothing. And it can be intensely satisfying when the flame catches and a new idea sweeps around the world.

When we venture beyond the edge of our knowledge, all we have is art.

Cities force us to interact with strangers and with the strange. They pry the mind open. And that is why they are the idea that has unleashed so many of our new ideas.

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.

Grit is the stubborn refusal to quit.

The best way to solve a problem? Try explaining it to somebody outside your field.

It's a hard thing to describe. It's just this sense that you got something to say.

To have a style is to be stuck.

In fact, the only way to remain creative over time--to not be undone by our expertise--is to experiment with ignorance, to stare at things we don't fully understand.

Design is the conscious imposition of meaningful order.

The vocational approach at NOCCA (New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts) helps build grit in students. It teaches them how to be single-minded in pursuit of a goal, to sacrifice for the sake of a passion. The teachers demand hard work from their kids because they know, from personal experience, that creative success requires nothing less.

While human nature largely determines how we hear the notes, it is nurture that lets us hear the music.

Like a work of art, we exceed our materials. Science needs art to frame the mystery, but art needs science so that not everything is a mystery. Neither truth alone is our solution, for our reality exists in plural

The great ages did not perhaps produce much more talent than ours,' [T.S.] Eliot wrote. 'But less talent was wasted.