In all the creative work that I have done, what has come first is a problem, a puzzle involving discomfort.
Interpretation
Creativity often starts with a challenge that needs to be solved.
Bertrand Russell's quote emphasizes that the foundation of all creative work lies in identifying and grappling with a problem or discomfort. This suggests that creativity is not merely a spontaneous act but often a response to challenges that compel individuals to think critically and innovate.
In practice
A speaker at an art workshop could use this quote to inspire attendees to embrace challenges in their creative journey.
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
At 6 years old, the ice became a place for me to express myself. Because I was so shy off the ice, it became my safe haven, with music and freedom and self-expression. That was my emotional outlet.
I never weary of great churches. It is my favorite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral.
Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.
Robert Rauschenberg was not a giant of American art; he was the giant. No American created so many aesthetic openings for so many artists.
Movies in Hollywood now, for the past 20 or 30 years, are made mainly by lawyers or agents.
The flavor of wine is like delicate poetry.
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