QuoteProject
Creativity needs a bit of untidiness. Make everything too neat and there is no room for experiment.
Charles Handy
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Creativity thrives in chaos and experimentation rather than strict order.

The quote emphasizes that in order to foster creativity, one must embrace a certain level of disorder and unpredictability. If everything is overly organized and controlled, it stifles the ability to experiment, innovate, and think outside the box, preventing the emergence of fresh and original ideas.

Themes

CreativityExperimentationUntidinessInnovationChaos

In practice

Example use cases

In a creative workshop, one might use this quote to encourage participants to experiment freely without fear of making a mess.

More from Charles Handy

The companies that survive longest are the one's that work out what they uniquely can give to the world not just growth or money but their excellence, their respect for others, or their ability to make people happy. Some call those things a soul.
Charles HandyRead
The first step is to measure whatever can easily be measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.
Charles HandyRead
Why don't we teach our children in school what they are? We should say to them, 'You are unique... you have the capacity for anything. You are a marvel'.
Charles HandyRead
To learn anything other than the stuff you find in books, you need to be able to experiment, to make mistakes, to accept feedback, and to try again. It doesn't matter whether you are learning to ride a bike or starting a new career, the cycle of experiment, feedback, and new experiment is always there.
Charles HandyRead
We cannot wait for great visions from great people, for they are in short supply. It is up to us to light our own small fires in the darkness.
Charles HandyRead
I believe that a lot of our striving after the symbols and levers of success is due to a basic insecurity, a need to prove ourselves. That done, grown up at last, we are free to stop pretending.
Charles HandyRead

Similar quotes

Sometimes ideas are coming so fast that I have to stop doing one song to get another. But I don't forget the first one. If it works, it will always be there. It's like the truth: it will find you and lift you up. And if it ain't right, it will dissolve like sand on the beach.
PrinceRead
Everything that happens in my day is a transaction between the external world and my internal world. Everything is raw material. Everything is relevant. Everything is usable. Everything feeds into my creativity. But without proper preparation, I cannot see it, retain it, and use it. Without the time and effort invested in getting ready to create, you can be hit by a thunderbolt and it'll just leave you stunned.
Twyla TharpRead
When we are involved in [creativity], we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life.
Mihaly CsikszentmihalyiRead
Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value
Ken RobinsonRead
Creativity has more to do with the elimination of the inessential than with inventing something new.
Helmut JahnRead
I guess my comfort zone as a writer is diametrically opposed to my comfort zone as a human being.
Jennifer EganRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.