Quotes About Creativity

Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different."23

A 2012 study documented how such shit rolled downhill: abusive senior leaders were prone to selecting or breeding abusive team leaders, who in turn, ignited destructive conflict in their teams, which stifled team members' creativity.

Creativity is a consequence of sheer productivity. If a creator wants to increase the production of hits, he or she must do it by risking a parallel increase in the production of misses. . . . The most successful creators tend to be those with the most failures!3 —Dean Keith Simonton, researcher, summarizing academic studies on individual creativity

During the early stages of a project, don't study how the task has been approached in the company, industry, field, or region where you are working.

variance in people, knowledge, activities, and organizational structures is crucial to creativity and innovation.

to find a few ideas that work, you need to try a lot that don't.

William Coyne, former head of research and development at 3M, tells how a human resource manager once threatened to fire a scientist who was asleep under his bench. Coyne took the HR manager to 3M's "Wall of Patents" to show him that the sleeping scientist had developed some of 3M's most profitable products. Coyne advised, "Next time you see him asleep, get him a pillow."3 Unfortunately, not all executives are so wise.

innovative companies need a wide range of ideas and that success requires a high failure rate.

I realize that protest paintings are not exactly in vogue, but I've done many.

I think of my peace paintings as one long poem, with each painting being a single stanza.

Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions.

The student of story collections finds himself adrift on an ocean of stories, an ocean which is boundless, deep and ceaselessly in motion.

Pioneers in the development of particular products and industries have been described by Schumpeter as "innovators," those "individuals who are daring, speculative, restless, imaginative and, more pertinently, eager to exploit new inventions.

When Handel was asked why his music was so cheerful, he replied, "I can't make any other. I write as I feel. When I think on God my heart is so full of joy that the notes dance and leap from my pen." —George Frideric Handel

You see, I believe that you cannot be taught to 'write.' You can be taught grammar and punctuation, but you cannot be taught to be a writer. That has to come from within.

once believed that a published author must be an Olympian being—a wise or at least worldly philosopher-god who rises at noon, feeds his muse a diet of scotch/rocks, and debauches his soul into the keys of a rusty Underwood Noiseless while the rest of the world sleeps.

I don't want to stand on the shoulders of giants." He paused, then lifted his own shoulders a little, as if acknowledging that he was giving voice to the sort of thought rarely spoken aloud. "I want to be a giant.

the maps are a very effective tool because it uses both hemispheres of the brain thanks to colors and keywords.

Remember the great adversity of art or anything else is a hurried life.

The market kills more artistic passion than anything else.

First you must have the images, then come the words.

You make pictures, not take them? Yes. At least that's how I think of it. That's the difference between Sunday snapshooters and someone who does it for a living... I don't just take things as given, I try to make them into something that reflects my personal consciousness, my spirit. I try to find the poetry in the image.

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in the case of poetry it is the exact opposite!

For the person with creative potential there is no wholeness except in using it.