Quotes About Creativity

The object, which is back of every true work of art, is the attainment of a state of being, a state of high functioning, a more than ordinary moment of existence... We make our discoveries while in the state because then we are clear-sighted.

A sweet disorder in the dressKindles in clothes a wantonness.

There is a danger in letting a camera make all its preprogrammed decisions for you:

You can make anything out of anything.

Third Doctor: A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting

Nothing they design ever gets in the way of a work of art.

Joan Maragall

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize." [ Modernism's Patriarch ( Time Magazine , June 10, 1996)]

It is hard to think of any work of art of which one can say 'this saved the life of one Jew, one Vietnamese, one Cambodian'. Specific books, perhaps; but as far as one can tell, no paintings or sculptures. The difference between us and the artists of the 1920's is that they they thought such a work of art could be made. Perhaps it was a certain naivete that made them think so. But it is certainly our loss that we cannot.

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt.

Nevertheless, what was made in the hope of transforming the world need not be rejected because it failed to do so – otherwise, one would also have to throw out a good deal of the greatest painting and poetry of the nineteenth century. An objective political failure can still work as a model of intellectual affirmation or dissent.

MOMA's values were blown through the American education system, from high school upwards-and downwards, too, greatly raising the status of "creativity" and "self-expression" in kindergarten. By the 1970s, the historical study of modern art had expanded to the point where students were scratching for unexploited thesis subjects. By the mid-eighties, twenty-one-year-old art-history majors would be writing papers on the twenty-six-year-old graffitists.

I have never been against new art as such; some of it is good, much is crap, most is somewhere in between.

There's a better way. There has to be education, and the education has to come from the poets and musicians, because it has to touch the heart rather than the intellect, it has to get in there deeply.

weird ideas spark innovation because each helps companies do at least one of three things: (1) increase variance in available knowledge, (2) see old things in new ways, and (3) break from the past. These are the three basic organizing principles for innovative work

A series of controlled experiments and field studies in organizations shows that when teams engage in conflict over ideas in an atmosphere of mutual respect, they develop better ideas and perform better .

Make sure that slow learners are rewarded—or at least not punished— for expressing their deviant views and acting in odd ways.

If you want a creative organization, inaction is the worst kind of failure.

Vu ja de means seeing old things that are inside and outside the company in new ways.

Be wary when people tell you that they don't produce a lot, but when they do, it will be "brilliant." Remember that innovation is largely a function of productivity.

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. —Thomas Edison

managers continue to use methods that force people to see old things in old ways, expecting new and profitable ideas somehow to magically appear.

an idea is creative when it is new to people who use or evaluate it, and (at least some of them) believe it could be valuable to themselves or others.

If you hire people who prompt discomfort in yourself and others, take extra care to listen to their ideas and insist that others do so as well.