Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don't leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.
Alan AldaRead
If you know what you're looking for, that's all you'll get - what's previously known. But when you're open to what's possible, you get something new - that's creativity.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Being open to possibilities fosters creativity, while focusing only on known outcomes limits you.
This quote by Alan Alda emphasizes the importance of maintaining an open mind in the creative process. When individuals restrict themselves to what they already know, they only encounter familiar results. In contrast, being receptive to new ideas and possibilities allows for the emergence of innovative and original concepts, which is the essence of creativity.
Themes
CreativityOpen-MindednessInnovationPossibilitiesImagination
In practice
Example use cases
In a workshop on innovation, using this quote can encourage participants to embrace new ideas.
More from Alan Alda
All quotes →Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.
Alan AldaRead
Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself.
Alan AldaRead
Here's my Golden Rule for a tarnished age: Be fair with others, but keep after them until they're fair with you.
Alan AldaRead
I found I wasn't asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something. I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn't know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen.
Alan AldaRead
You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself.
Alan AldaRead
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The only way to maximize group creativity—to make the whole more than the sum of its parts—is to encourage a candid discussion of mistakes. In part, this is because the acceptance of error reduces cost. When you believe your flaws will be quickly corrected by the group, you're less worried about perfecting your contribution, which leads to a more candid conversation. We can only get it right when we talk about what we got wrong.
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Coming up with ideas is the easiest thing on earth. Putting them down is the hardest.
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