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Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time... Creative individuals have a combination of playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Creative individuals possess a blend of intelligence and innocence, balancing playfulness with responsibility.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi highlights the dual nature of creative individuals, indicating that they are often intelligent but may lack experience or practicality. This combination allows them to approach problems with both playful exploration and disciplined effort, leading to innovative results while sometimes embracing a sense of naivety or irresponsibility.

Themes

CreativityIntelligencePlayfulnessDisciplineResponsibilityNaivety

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about innovation at a conference, you might say, 'As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi pointed out, creative individuals blend intelligence with a level of naivety, allowing them to explore new ideas.'

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The germ of an idea doesn't make the sculpture that stands up... so the next stage is hard work
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It is not the skills we actually have that determine how we feel but the ones we think we have.
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To know oneself is the first step toward making flow a part of one's entire life. But just as there is no free lunch in the material economy, nothing comes free in the psychic one. If one is not willing to invest psychic energy in the internal reality of consciousness, and instead squanders it in chasing external rewards, one loses mastery of one's life, and ends up becoming a puppet of circumstances.
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To live means to experience-through doing, feeling, thinking. Experience takes place in time, so time is the ultimate scarce resource we have. Over the years, the content of experience will determine the quality of life. Therefore one of the most essential decisions any of us can make is about how one's time is allocated or invested.
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It is as if evolution has built a safety device in our nervous system that allows us to experience full happiness only when we are living at 100%-when we are fully using the physical and mental equipment we have been given.
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Our jobs determine to a large extent what our lives are like. Is what you do for a living making you ill? Does it keep you from becoming a more fully realized person? Do you feel ashamed of what you have to do at work? All too often, the answer to such questions is yes. Yet it does not have to be like that. Work can be one of the most joyful, most fulfilling aspects of life. Whether it will be or not depends on the actions we collectively take.
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Similar quotes

I was in a taxi the other night, and we started talking about life and the taxi driver goes, 'Chaos and creativity go together. If you lose one per cent of your chaos, you lose your creativity.' I said that's the most brilliant thing I've heard. I needed to hear that years ago.
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When anyone starts out to do something creative - especially if it seems a little unusual - they seek approval, often from those least inclined to give it. But a creative life cannot be sustained by approval, any more than it can be destroyed by criticism - you learn this as you go on.
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The idea flow from the human spirit is absolutely unlimited. All you have to do is tap into that well. I don't like to use the word efficiency. It's creativity. It's a belief that every person counts.
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It’s very hard to have ideas. It’s very hard to put yourself out there, it’s very hard to be vulnerable, but those people who do that are the dreamers, the thinkers and the creators. They are the magic people of the world.
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Creativity needs a bit of untidiness. Make everything too neat and there is no room for experiment.
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To create something you must be something.
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