Quotes About Inspiration

When someone is made the head of an office in the Ogilvy & Mather chain, I send him a Matrioshka doll from Gorky. If he has the curiosity to open it, and keep opening it until he comes to the inside of the smallest doll, he finds this message: If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants. Even

The final test of a leader is the feeling you have when you leave his presence after a conference. Have you a feeling of uplift and confidence?' Alcoholics

Leo Burnett said it better, 'When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either.

If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs, but if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, Ogilvy & Mather will become a company of giants.

Get rid of sad dogs who spread gloom.

Where people aren't having any fun, they seldom produce good work.

The creative process requires more than reason. Most original thinking isn't even verbal. It requires 'a groping experimentation with ideas, governed by intuitive hunches and inspired by the unconscious.' The majority of business men are incapable of original thinking because they are unable to escape from the tyranny of reason. Their imaginations are blocked.

The most effective leader is the one who satisfies the psychological needs of his followers.

Don't bunt. Aim out of the ballpark. Aim for the company of immortals.

Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process.

In my experience, committees can criticize, but they cannot create. 'Search the parks in all your cities You'll find no statues of committees.

I still do think fondly about my days in Edendale and Mixville — the little-known corners of the city limits where the movies actually were born. Tucked into the once barren hills just west of Downtown were the studios of Western hero Tom Mix and fledgling cartoonist Walt Disney. Behind razor wire near Glendale Boulevard lingered a small stone monument to Comedy. Why? Because the ancient Selig Company had once made movies there.

I know I had my equivalents in Adrian Lester and Lenny James when I was at drama school. I remember David Harewood doing 'Othello' at the National, and Adrian Lester having done Cheek by Jowl's famous 'As You Like It and Company' at the Donmar. Not necessarily performances I saw, but just the fact they happened was massively encouraging.

save our souls from being so blind that we pass unseeing when even the common thornbush is aflame with Your glory,

biblical inerrancy.

C.S. Lewis and Billy Graham once did.

And I have come to understand the truth of what Ansel Adams said that you don't make a photograph just with a camera but that you bring to the act all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard and the people you have loved.

So we can expect a bit more warmth, a bit more "honesty and a bit more Brian Clough from the League Champions? " asks Mitchell. "A lot more Brian Clough actually" I tell him. "A lot more

Reporters heard words but not poetry, saw old politicians but not new heroes.

Okay, Eliza. Now–you know–rise up! Think about those buffalos," Abby said. "Walking backward," added Ben. "Wearing diapers!" Ricky reminded her, giggling with glee. "I know how to do it!" Eliza snapped.

Perhaps all play is metaphor, perhaps all metaphor is play.

But here's a bit of spoilsport historical reality: It wasn't the finches that inspired Darwin, it was the Mockingbirds.

Fred Bailey, a young black runaway, changed his last name to Douglass in honor of Scott's epic poem The Lady of the Lake. The hero of the epic was Lord James of Douglas, who was willing to give up his life to avert a bloody civil war between highlanders and lowlanders. Bailey's black benefactor, Nathan Johnson of New Bedford, Massachusetts, suggested adding an extra s for good measure. Bailey would now be known as Frederick Douglass.

Northrop Frye said that a poet is a myth's way of making another myth.