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It is a great difficulty and a great necessity to have to start with the smallest.
Paul Klee
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Starting with small ideas is both challenging and essential for creativity.

This quote by Paul Klee highlights the paradox of creativity where beginning with small, simple ideas can be daunting yet necessary for growth and innovation. It suggests that even the greatest works of art or thought begin with humble beginnings, and embracing this challenge is crucial for any artist or thinker.

Themes

CreativityBeginningChallengesArtGrowth

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about innovation, one might say, 'As Paul Klee reminds us, it is a great difficulty and a great necessity to have to start with the smallest.'

More from Paul Klee

Everything passes, and what remains of former times, what remains of life, is the spiritual. In everything we do, the claim of the Absolute is unchanging.
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The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.
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To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers.
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You adapt yourself to the contents of the paintbox.
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All art is a memory of age-old things, dark things, whose fragments live on in the artist.
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The more horrible this world (as today, for instance), the more abstract our art, whereas a happy world brings forth an art of the here and now.
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