Quotes on Creativity

Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.

The highest prize we can receive for creative work is the joy of being creative. Creative effort spent for any other reason than the joy of being in that light filled space, love, god, whatever we want to call it, is lacking in integrity. . .

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things.

An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally.

I looked at my right hand, the hand with which I painted. There was power in that hand. Power to create and destroy. Power to bring pleasure and pain. Power to amuse and horrify. There was in that hand the demonic and the divine at one and the same time. The demonic and the divine were two aspects of the same force. Creation was demonic and divine. Creativity was demonic and divine. I was demonic and divine.

Surprise is where creativity comes in.

Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

You can think about red. You can think about pink. You can think up a horse. Oh, the THINKS you can think!

Creativity has more to do with the elimination of the inessential than with inventing something new.

Humor has bailed me out of more tight situations than I can think of. If you go with your instincts and keep your humor, creativity follows. With luck, success comes, too.

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing.

Seek simplicity, and distrust it.

And it dawned on me that I might have to change my inner thought patterns... that I would have to start believing in possibilities that I wouldn't have allowed before, that I had been closing my creativity down to a very narrow, controllable scale... that things had become too familiar and I might have to disorientate myself. p.71

It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.

In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.

When you are describing, A shape, or sound, or tint; Don't state the matter plainly, But put it in a hint; And learn to look at all things, With a sort of mental squint.

Reading, conversation, environment, culture, heroes, mentors, nature – all are lottery tickets for creativity. Scratch away at them and you’ll find out how big a prize you’ve won.