Quotes About Creativity

Individuals who depart from the norms—heroes, saints, sages, artists, and poets, as well as madmen and criminals—look for different things in life than most others do.

Free time, on the other hand, is unstructured, and requires much greater effort to be shaped into something that can be enjoyed.

Even the most highly respected physicist, artist, or politician becomes a hollow bore and ceases to enjoy life if all he can interest himself in is his limited role in the universe.

Even when children are taught music, the usual problem often arises: too much emphasis is placed on how they perform, and too little on what they experience.

The autotelic self transforms potentially entropic experience into flow.

the past can never be literally true in memory: it must be continuously edited, and the question is only whether we take creative control of the editing or not.

In order to survive, cultures must eliminate most of the new ideas their members produce. Cultures are conservative, and for good reason. No culture could assimilate all the novelty people produce without dissolving into chaos.

creativity must, in the last analysis, be seen not as something happening within a person but in the relationships within a system.

creativity results from the interaction of a system composed of three elements: a culture that contains symbolic rules, a person who brings novelty into the symbolic domain, and a field of experts who recognize and validate the innovation

Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives… most of the things that are interesting, important, and human are the results of creativity… [and] when we are involved in it, we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life.

It also seems true that centers of creativity tend to be at the intersection of different cultures, where beliefs, lifestyles, and knowledge mingle and allow individuals to see new combinations of ideas with greater ease. In cultures that are uniform and rigid, it takes a greater investment of attention to achieve new ways of thinking. In other words, creativity is more likely in places where new ideas require less effort to be perceived.

Artists agree that a painter cannot make a creative contribution without looking, and looking, and looking at previous art, and without knowing what other artists and critics consider good and bad art. Writers say that you have to read, read, and read some more, and know what the critics' criteria for good writing are, before you can write creatively yourself.

It's fun to come up with an idea, and if nobody wants it, I don't give a damn. It's just fun to come up with something strange and different.

Now, people don't like this explanation. They say, "What? You think of junk?" I say, "Yup. You must." You cannot a priori think only of good ideas.

Albert Einstein once wrote that art and science are two of the greatest forms of escape from reality that humans have devised.

Thus the creative process is less linear than recursive. How many iterations it goes through, how many loops are involved, how many insights are needed, depends on the depth and breadth of the issues dealt with.

This does not mean that creative persons are hyperactive, always "on," constantly churning away. In fact, they often take rests and sleep a lot. The important thing is that the energy is under their own control—it is not controlled by the calendar, the clock, an external schedule. When necessary they can focus it like a laser beam; when it is not, they immediately start recharging their batteries.

it's very clear to me that my ability to think and write at the same time depends on the flow of ink. The thing I enjoy most is the flow of my own ideas and getting them down on paper. I will not write with a ballpoint pen, because it doesn't really flow. That's why I use a fountain pen. And only a fountain pen that really works very well.

Many of the peculiarities attributed to creative persons are really just ways to protect the focus of concentration so that they may lose themselves in the creative process. Distractions interrupt flow, and it may take hours to recover the peace of mind one needs to get on with the work. The more ambitious the task, the longer it takes to lose oneself in it, and the easier it is to get distracted.

Because for better or for worse, our future is now closely tied to human creativity.

Unfortunately, many people find the only challenges they can respond to are violence, gambling, random sex, or drugs. Some of these experiences can be enjoyable, but these episodes of flow do not add up to a sense of satisfaction and happiness over time. Pleasure does not lead to creativity, but soon turns into addiction—the thrall of entropy.

The real story of creativity is more difficult and strange than many overly optimistic accounts have claimed.

Edison's or Einstein's discoveries would be inconceivable without the prior knowledge, without the intellectual and social network that stimulated their thinking, and without the social mechanisms that recognized and spread their innovations.

To achieve creativity in an existing domain, there must be surplus attention available.