147 Creativity Quotes

Inspiration often strikes when we least expect it, yet we all experience moments when our creative wells run dry. Whether you're an artist, writer, entrepreneur, or simply someone looking to inject more imagination into your daily life, a powerful quote can reignite that creative spark. That's why we've carefully curated a collection of the top 147 creativity quotes from some of the world's most innovative minds. Dive in and let these words of wisdom fuel your next great idea!

1. “Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself.” - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

2. “To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” - Joseph Chilton Pearce

3. “An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.” - Oscar Wilde

4. “The inner fire is the most important thing mankind possesses.” - Edith Södergran

5. “To be an artist means never to avert one's eyes.” - Akira Kurosawa

6. “Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.” - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

7. “It's easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It's a lot more difficult to perform one.” - Chuck Palahniuk

8. “All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions” - Leonardo da Vinci

9. “The knowledge of all things is possible” - Leonardo da Vinci

10. “He had been standing still; for an artist, one of the more painful forms of death.” - Irving Stone

11. “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” - Albert Einstein

12. “I dream in fire but work in clay.” - Arthur Machen

13. “Art transcends its limitations only by staying within them.” - Flannery O'Connor

14. “To be an outlaw you must first have a base in law to reject and get out of, I never had such a base. I never had a place I could call home that meant any more than a key to a house, apartment or hotel room. … Am I alien? Alien from what exactly? Perhaps my home is my dream city, more real than my waking life precisely because it has no relation to waking life…” - William S. Burroughs

15. “A picture might be worth a thousand words but a good sentence is worth a thousand windows” - Mati Klarwein

16. “His body and his soul appeared to have the strange ability to repel the hours, just as, inversely, a magnet attracts metal. Everything spun about him and fled; he was always the sole centre of an enormous circumference. He kept moving forwards, body and soul, in the hope of coming close to what fled at his approach. The same thing happened with time – his position remained constant in relation to the thing which, however hard he tried to clasp it to him, stole away from him and bounded into the distance. He was the one who had no incriminating papers in his drawers, who could show his diary to anyone. He was a creator. Perhaps that was why his life did not exist” - Mário de Sá-Carneiro

17. “You can’t keep bitch-slapping your creativity, or it’ll run away and find a new pimp.” - George Meyer

18. “I criticize by creation, not by finding fault.” - Marcus Tullius Cicero

19. “Uncertainty is a quality to be cherished, therefore – if not for it, who would dare to undertake anything?” - Auguste de Villiers de L'Isle-Adam

20. “The mind I love most must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind.” - Katherine Mansfield

21. “Be creative! Write, sing, dance, paint, whatever you do, make something for your Maker!” - Marja Meijers

22. “Creativity is the state of consciousness in which you enter into the treasury of your innermost being and bring the beauty into manifestation.” (p.232)” - Torkom Saraydarian

23. “You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression of the emotion awakened in you by the subject.” - Henri Matisse

24. “Routine kills creative thought.” - Scarlett Thomas

25. “A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

26. “What does one prefer? An art that struggles to change the social contract, but fails? Or one that seeks to please and amuse, and succeeds?” - Robert Hughes

27. “It seems obvious, looking back, that the artists of Weimar Germany and Leninist Russia lived in a much more attenuated landscape of media than ours, and their reward was that they could still believe, in good faith and without bombast, that art could morally influence the world. Today, the idea has largely been dismissed, as it must in a mass media society where art's principal social role is to be investment capital, or, in the simplest way, bullion. We still have political art, but we have no effective political art. An artist must be famous to be heard, but as he acquires fame, so his work accumulates 'value' and becomes, ipso-facto, harmless. As far as today's politics is concerned, most art aspires to the condition of Muzak. It provides the background hum for power.” - Robert Hughes

28. “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.” - Robert Hughes

29. “That's the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.” - Ray Bradbury

30. “The palace started as a single vaulted room and grew in proportion to my despair. It began as an exercise to keep my mind from its melancholy, then it became a dream and a necessity. . . . I built a temple in my head. . . . Its hallways were as lofty as a cathedral, and the arch of each window as supple as a bow. Its corridors were the passages of my own brain.” - Lisa St. Aubin de Teran

31. “He had thrilled to his own power only in the throes of sex, when he didn't have the presence of mind to know that pleasure wouldn't last forever, and in the flush of freedom, when he was too innocent to know he wasn't free.Now he seized the power that came from that collision of sex with freedom called love.” - steve erickson

32. “All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate.” - Julio Cortazar

33. “How could poetry and literature have arisen from something as plebian as the cuneiform equivalent of grocery-store bar codes? I prefer the version in which Prometheus brought writing to man from the gods. But then I remind myself that…we should not be too fastidious about where great ideas come from. Ultimately, they all come from a wrinkled organ that at its healthiest has the color and consistency of toothpaste, and in the end only withers and dies.” - Alice Weaver Flaherty

34. “The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.” - Julian Barnes

35. “You don’t make art out of good intentions.” - Gustave Flaubert

36. “Everything you invent is true: you can be sure of that. Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.” - Julian Barnes

37. “No one has the right to enter literature without fresh new ideas. We’ve got too many dexterous drudges as it is.” - Jan Neruda

38. “I know that no reader ever asks a question. A writer must force his favors upon his readers.” - Jan Neruda

39. “(the modern writer’s aim is) general revelation by suggestion (and) making a very tiny part do for a whole.” - Sean O'Faolain

40. “He possessed the logic of all good intentions and a knowledge of all the tricks of his trade, and yet he never succeeded at anything, because he believed too much in the impossible. Surprising? Why so? He was forever in the act of conceiving it!” - Charles Baudelaire

41. “Mr. Freeman sighs. "No imagination. What are you thirteen? Fourteen? You've already let them beat your creativity out of you!” - Laurie Halse Anderson

42. “We must be careful not to discourage our twelve-year-olds by making them waste the best years of their lives preparing for examinations.” - Freeman Dyson

43. “Sometimes an artist's first invention is herself.” - Stephanie Vaughn

44. “Every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had."[Commencement Speech; Mount Holyoke College, May 23, 1999]” - Anna Quindlen

45. “Whoever uses the spirit that is in him creatively is an artist.To make living itself an art, that is the goal.” - Henry Miller

46. “The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.” - Irvin D. Yalom

47. “Fashion is ephemeral, dangerous and unfair.” - Karl Lagerfeld

48. “Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

49. “Writing is not a matter of time, but a matter or of space. If you don't keep space in your head for writing, you won't write even if you have the time.” - Katerina Stoykova Klemer

50. “Absurdity and anti—absurdity are the two poles of creative energy.” - Karl Lagerfeld

51. “Fear is felt by writers at every level. Anxiety accompanies the first word they put on paper and the last.” - Ralph Keyes

52. “Is there magic in this world? Certainly! But it is not the kind of magic written about in fantasy stories. It is the kind of magic that comes from ideas and the hard work it often takes to make them real. ” - Robert Fanney

53. “Tis well to borrow from the good and the great; 'Tis wise to learn: 'tis God-like to create!” - John Godfrey Saxe

54. “There is new research showing that our creative potential increases with age. Our creativity is a product of our inner and outer experience, and as we get older, we have all kinds of experience to draw on. Also, research tells us that creativity brings energy, vitality and good health.” - Sandra Cusack

55. “He is a great enough magician to tap our most common nightmares, daydreams and twilight fancies, but he never invented them either: he found them a place to live, a green alternative to each day's madness here in a poisoned world. We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers - thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.” - Peter S. Beagle

56. “Creativity is not so much a boundless well, but an all-you-can-eat buffet of elements for your creative endeavor.Eventually you've eaten your fill, and it's time to digest and then make something.But at some point, it will be time to return to the restaurant.” - Vera Nazarian

57. “I think that you’ve got to make something that pleases you and hope that other people feel the same way.” - Thomas Keller

58. “Even for women without children, trading hours that produce income for hours that produce “only” art seems like a foolish decision. What a loss for the world, though, to have women's voices silenced because art is our last priority.” - Holly Robinson

59. “Be undeniably good.” - Steve Martin

60. “Innate in nearly every artistic nature is a wanton, treacherous penchant for accepting injustice when it creates beauty and showing sympathy for and paying homage to aristocratic privilege.” - Thomas Mann

61. “A creative writing teacher at San Jose State used to say about clichés: 'Avoid them like the plague.' Then he'd laugh at his own joke. The class laughed along with him, but I always thought clichés got a bum rap. Because, often, they're dead-on. But the aptness of the clichéd saying is overshadowed by the nature of the saying as a cliché.” - Khaled Hosseini

62. “All that remains of the garden city in our own day are traffic-free enclaves, islands in a sea of traffic where the pedestrian leads a legally protected by languishing existence, comparable to that of the North American Indians on their reservations...In reality the modern urbanist regards the city as a gigantic centre of production, geared to the efficient transport of workers and goods, to the accommodation of people and the storage of wares, to industrial and commercial activity. The rest, that is to say creativity, life, is optional and comes under the heading of recreation and leisure activities.” - Tom McDonough

63. “Think of yourself as a brand. You need to be remembered. What will they remember you for? What defines you? If you have it in you, do something that defines you. Invent something, develop a unique skill, get noticed for something — it creates a talking point.” - Chris Arnold

64. “Very well then! I'll write, write write. He let the words soak into his mind and displace all else.A man had a choice, after all. He devoted his life to his work or to his wife and children and home. It could not be combined; not in this day and age. In this insane world where God was second to income and goodness to wealth.” - Richard Matheson

65. “When I am ..... completely myself, entirely alone... or during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how these ideas come I know not nor can I force them.” - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

66. “Human resources are like natural resources; they're often buried deep. You have to go looking for them, they're not just lying around on the surface. You have to create the circumstances where they show themselves.” - Ken Robinson

67. “We have sold ourselves into a fast food model of education, and it's impoverishing our spirit and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies.” - Ken Robinson

68. “People wonder why so many writers come to live in Paris. I’ve been living ten years in Paris and the answer seems simple to me: because it’s the best place to pick ideas. Just like Italy, Spain.. or Iran are the best places to pick saffron. If you want to pick opium poppies you go to Burma or South-East Asia. And if you want to pick novel ideas, you go to Paris.” - Roman Payne

69. “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. . .” - Marianne Williamson

70. “If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to ­music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.” - Hilary Mantel

71. “They spell-caught the sounds of cat paws, the breath of fish, the spittle of birds, the hairs of a woman's beard, and the roots of a mountain, and spun them around the sinews of a bear. That made a bond that looked as fine as a ribbon of silk, but, since it was made of things not in this world, it was so strong nothing in the world could break it.” - Ingri D'Aulaire

72. “The words of his various writing instructors and professional mentors over the years came back to him at times like these, and he found a new understanding in their advice: Writing is rewriting. The rough draft is just that. You can’t polish what you haven’t written.Things that made for a normal life—like a daily routine that followed the sun—took a back seat to times like these, and he exulted in that change because it served as proof that his writing was indeed the most important thing in his life. It wasn’t a conscious choice on his part, like deciding to repaint the bathroom or go buy the groceries, but an overarching reallocation of his existence that was as undeniable as breathing. Day turned into night, breakfast turned into dinner, and the laptop or the writing tablet beckoned even when he was asleep. He would often awake with a new idea—as if he’d merely been on a break and not unconscious—and he would see the empty seat before the desk not as his station in some pointless assembly line, but as the pilot’s seat in a ship that could go anywhere.” - Vincent H. O'Neil

73. “The road to creativity passes so close to the madhouse and often detours or ends there.” - Ernest Becker

74. “Marijuana enhances our mind in a way that enables us to take a different perspective from 'high up', to see and evaluate our own lives and the lives of others in a privileged way. Maybe this euphoric and elevating feeling of the ability to step outsidethe box and to look at life’s patterns from this high perspective is the inspiration behind the slang term “high” itself.” - Sebastian Marincolo

75. “Design is a fundamental human activity, relevant and useful to everyone. Anything humans create—be it product, communication or system—is a result of the process of making inspiration real. I believe in doing what works as circumstances change: quirky or unusual solutions are often good ones. Nature bends and so should we as appropriate. Nature is always right outside our door as a reference and touch point. We should use it far more than we do.” - Maggie Macnab

76. “Hopefully, you will glimpse something of your own life’s journey and with Elemental’s Power of Illuminated Love, possibly recognize and celebrate something you had not been able to recognize or celebrate before.” - Luther E. Vann

77. “It has been my personal experience that as I allow the painting to speak I become lost, it is delicious and at the same time frightening. The best ones, to me, have a life of their own.” - Luther E. Vann

78. “Creativity is a gift. It doesn't come through if the air is cluttered.” - John Lennon

79. “Every man has a specific skill, whether it is discovered or not, that more readily and naturally comes to him than it would to another, and his own should be sought and polished. He excels best in his niche - originality loses its authenticity in one's efforts to obtain originality.” - Criss Jami

80. “Poets may be delightful creatures in the meadow or the garret, but they are menaces on the assembly line.” - Rollo May

81. “When you have wit of your own, it's a pleasure to credit other people for theirs.” - Criss Jami

82. “Everyone has their own ways of expression. I believe we all have a lot to say, but finding ways to say it is more than half the battle.” - Criss Jami

83. “To be an artist was to have failure as your constant bedfellow.” - M. Thomas Gammarino

84. “It was not the size of things that mattered but their perfection, it was not what one had that was important, but what one made.” - Elizabeth Goudge

85. “Creativity is contagious. And so is banality. Criticism is an art in itself. Don’t let the dullness around destroy the creativity within. T.S. Eliot said, “honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.” Good to remember…” - Elif Shafak

86. “The idea that creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time.” - Stephen King

87. “Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is saidIt was the dream itself enchanted me("The Circus Animal's Desertion")” - W.B. Yeats

88. “Imagine in vibrant detail your heart’s desire—a reality only you can envision, an adventure only you can direct.Then cradle your creation. Caress it. Mold it. Coddle it until it comes to life.And when your precious treasure grows so grand as to steal your breath away, set it free for all the world to experience. For that is how you live your dreams.” - Richelle Goodrich

89. “This is a perfectly good picture. And if I didn't know you, I would be impressed and charmed. But I do know you."He thought some more, wondering whether he dared say precisely what he felt, for he knew he could never explain exactly why the idea came to him. "It's the painting of a dutiful daughter," he said eventually, looking at her cautiously to see her reaction. "You want to please. You are always aware of what the person looking at this picture will think of it. Because of that you've missed something important. Does that make sense?"She thought, then nodded. "All right," she said grudgingly and with just a touch of despair in her voice. "You win."Julien grunted. "Have another go, then. I shall come back and come back until you figure it out.""And you'll know?""You'll know. I will merely get the benefit of it.” - Iain Pears

90. “Indeed, very few people are aware that in each of our fingers, located somewhere between the first phalange, the mesophalange, and the metaphalange, there is a tiny brain. The fact is that the other organ which we call the brain, the one with which we came into the world, the one which we transport around in our head and which transports us so that we can transport it, has only ever had very general, vague, diffuse and, above all, unimaginative ideas about what the hands and fingers should do. For example, if the brain-in-our-head suddenly gets an idea for a painting, a sculpture, a piece of music or literature, or a clay figurine, it simply sends a signal to that effect and then waits to see what will happen” - José Saramago

91. “Creativity is a magic wand that works two ways. When you set it in action and seek to create something, it does not just brings into existence that object or work, it also raises in your heart a dream, a hope, and a will to achieve that creation. And when all else seems lost and steeped in hopelessness, the magic of creativity can still keep you going. For when all else seem dark, an urge to create something would still give you an aim to look forward to. And if you just take hold of this urge, it will take hold of you and see you through even the darkest times. Like it did to me.” - Jyoti Arora

92. “If little else, the brain is an educational toy.The problem with possessing such an engaging toy is that other people want to play with it, too. Sometime they'd rather play with yours than theirs. Or they object if you play with yours in a different manner from the way they play with theirs. The result is, a few games out of a toy department of possibilities are universally and endlessly repeated. If you don't play some people's game, they say that you have "lost your marbles," not recognizing that, while Chinese checkers is indeed a fine pastime, a person may also play dominoes, chess, strip poker, tiddlywinks, drop-the-soap or Russian roulette with his brain.” - Tom Robbins

93. “Human beings have an extraordinary capacity to imagine possibilities and then turn those possibilities into realities. Evident in the gifts of civilization—in our arts, languages, sciences, technologies, businesses, governments, and so on—it is clear that we are a profoundly creative species. Yet many of us only access a smidgen of our creativity.” - Scott Edmund Miller

94. “As Aristotle said, 'Excellence is a habit.' I would say furthermore that excellence is made constant through the feeling that comes right after one has completed a work which he himself finds undeniably awe-inspiring. He only wants to relax until he's ready to renew such a feeling all over again because to him, all else has become absolutely trivial.” - Criss Jami

95. “The public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities.... A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry and bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions--one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by these words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true.” - Oscar Wilde

96. “There is really nothing you gain from being a pauper rather you loose every thing.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

97. “God is a God of purpose. He doesn't wake-up and start dabbling into things; He doesn't practice trial and error. His ways are sure, they may be low but they are always sure.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

98. “While art thrives on the blazing colours of scandal, literature blossoms on the dark soil of tragedy.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

99. “You cannot teach creativity—how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be.” Mario Vargas Llosa” - Mario Vargas Llosa

100. “When most of the greatest individuals in history were misunderstood and you've spent so much of your own adult life misunderstood, you can't help but believe that the majority of people know very little worth knowing.” - Criss Jami

101. “Respect is not creative ... Chanel is an institution, and you have to treat an institution like a whore — and then you get something out of her.” - Karl Lagerfeld

102. “The reflection of chaos is creativity.” - Lionel Suggs

103. “Admittedly, art is somewhat like spit. It does not repulse or even worry is while it is still inside of us, but once it exits our body, it becomes disgusting.” - Ivan Brunetti

104. “Curiosity is very important I think, and I think too much of education, starting with childhood education, is either designed to kill curiosity or it works out that way anyway.” - Myles Horton

105. “A lack of illusion is golden, and it is quite possible that creativity is the highest form of intelligence. One might further develop oneself in the creative sense and, therefore, at times, find some degree of shame more so than pride when having always followed that of the safe and ever-praised academia.” - Criss Jami

106. “Thoughts are like burning stars, and ideas, they flood, they stretch the universe.” - Criss Jami

107. “Susan Griffin describes it as a time when "there is no intrinsic authority to my words." "I...clean off my desk. I make telephone calls. I know I am avoiding the typewriter. I know that in my mind, where there might be words, there is simply a blankness. I may try to write and then my words bore me." But when the time is right, the waiting will have been worth it. "Because each time I write, each time the authentic words break through, I am changed. The older order that I was collapses and dies. I lose control. I do not know exactly what words will appear on the page. I follow language. I follow the sound of the words, and I am surprised and transformed by what I record." Excerpt from "Thoughts on Writing: A Diary," in The Writer on her Work.” - Judith Barrington

108. “as an artist, one of the toughest things to do is getting someone to understand why you think the way you think. And as much as i don't wanna care what they think about my thinking, it comes down to making them understand or watching them leave.” - Darnell Lamont Walker

109. “Oh, man. I’m not interested to driving the Lamborghini. I’m more interested in making Lamborghini. That’s what creativity means to me.” - Seong pill kon

110. “People won't see Imagination in something that doesn't relate to their experience because of their own mental limitations. I want people to escape the expected and ordinary, to escape the regular expectations of a story, and truly step into a different world of literature.” - Lionel Suggs

111. “Creative people, especially those who are just starting out, feel that they have to conform and be a mass-produced product in order to be noticed. The truth of the matter is that genuineness and unconventionality is often what helps make a mark on the world.” - Veronika Carnaby

112. “The heart of creativity is an experience of the mystical union; the heart of the mystical union is an experience of creativity.” - Julia Cameron

113. “Every creative story is different. And every creative story is the same. There was nothing. Now there is something. It's almost like magic.” - Jonah Lehrer

114. “Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.” - Albert Einstein

115. “The necessary unlikeness between the creator and the created holds within it the equally necessary likeness of the thing made to him who makes it, and so of the work of the made to the work of the maker... The imagination of man is made in the image of the imagination of God.” - George MacDonald

116. “I'm a peasantI'm the muzhikA pest you're destined to play the musicAnd yes it's pleasant to say it's beauty I'mIndebted to rest respecting it truly” - Criss Jami

117. “A true great artist at heart never ceases to create, continuously amazes and keeps sharing his gift despite barriers, judgement, fears and dreaded myths. If you stopped being creative out of fear or loss of self-esteem or pride, you were never an artist first and foremost for you have ran away from your true calling." - Elizabeth's Quotes” - Elizabeth E. Castillo

118. “But however good you get at translating personality into line or paint it's no go if your personality isn't worth translating.” - John Fowles

119. “And so we keep on thinking, because the next thought might be the answer.” - Jonah Lehrer

120. “One with true creativity can erase their one past, and replace it with an infinite number of pasts, creating new possibilities for the future.” - Lionel Suggs

121. “I hope that I capture something in my work that is about the elusive, the magical and powerful and the transformative. The writing in itself is transformative for me.” - H Raven Rose

122. “And so I miss the fertilization that might come from a contact. And for me--yes, I think I might as well admit it--fertilization does come a great deal from contacts. Why then do I avoid them--in a sort of false pride--shyness--timorous modesty? I used to be afraid of falling in love with people--or having them think I was--that I was chasing them (how ridiculous--I am actually always running away!) but now surely--I should be mature enough to be over that. I am no longer afraid of falling in love, and the other false modesties should vanish. I cannot bear to think "par delicatesse j'ai perdu ma vie." (Because of discretion I have lost my life).” - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

123. “If you knew all about it, it wouldn't be the leading edge.” - Karl Pribram

124. “Speed is not always a constituent to great work, the process of creation should be given time and thought.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

125. “The poem or the discovery exists in two moments of vision: the moment of appreciation as much as that of creation; for the appreciator must see the movement, wake to the echo which was started in the creation of the work. In the moment of appreciation we live again the moment when the creator saw and held the hidden likeness. When a simile takes us aback and persuades us together, when we find a juxtaposition in a picture both odd and intriguing, when a theory is at once fresh and convincing, we do not merely nod over someone else's work. We re-enact the creative act, and we ourselves make the discovery again......Reality is not an exhibit for man's inspection, labeled: "Do not touch." There are no appearances to be photographed, no experiences to be copied, in which we do not take part. We re-make nature by the act of discovery, in the poem or in the theorem. And the great poem and the deep theorem are new to every reader, and yet are his own experiences, because he himself re-creates them. They are the marks of unity in variety; and in the instant when the mind seizes this for itself, in art or in science, the heart misses a beat.” - Jacob Bronowski

126. “I am the wood frame, the bundle of ox hair, and the creative spark... my value unhangable.” - Marina Leigh Duff

127. “Science, in all its greatness, is still subject to human creativity. It starts the first moment a child tries to reach up and grab at the clouds. Soon, the child learns that his own hands cannot reach the sky, but his hands are not the limit of his potential. For the human brain observes, considers, understands, and adapts. Locked within the mind is infinite possibility.” - Yukito Kishiro

128. “The Indians say to draw someone's portrait is to steal their soul, i am taking photographs, does it mean that i am just borrowing them?” - T.A

129. “In the case of the creative mind, it seems to me, the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it review and inspect the multitude. You worthy critics, or whatever you may call yourselves, are ashamed or afraid of the momentary and passing madness which is found in all real creators, the longer or shorter duration of which distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer. Hence your complaints of unfruitfulness, for you reject too soon and discriminate too severely.” - Friedrich Schiller

130. “A writer's mind can never be empty.” - Michael Acciarino

131. “History tells creativity is a result of Soul song.” - APORVAKALA

132. “I had a day when I was busy in the world, where the activity created a turmoil on the surface of my consciousness like waves on the surface of the ocean, which made it difficult to see through the waves to the inner silence. It reminded me that we need to develop both the capacity to use the mind when engaged in activity and social relations, and to be able to let go of the activity and to come in contact with the deep inner silence. The relationship between being active in the world and in social relations and the inner silence is like the relationship between the waves on the surface of the ocean and the deep inner silence on the bottom of the ocean.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

133. “Through becoming aware of how the inner man and woman relates and communicates inside ourselves, it creates a joy and satisfaction in the three life areas that they influence: our meditation and inner growth, our relationships and our work and creativity.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

134. “Creativity arises from our ability to see things from many different angles.” - Keri Smith

135. “If the spirit of wonder & curiosity stays alive in us, then surely we will always have new questions, and always expand our creativity in response?” - jay woodman

136. “I'd say I never considered myself a great architect. I'm more of a creative problem solver with good taste and a soft spot for logistical nightmares.” - Maria Semple

137. “Flexibility is a requirement for survival.” - Roger Von Oech

138. “Creation's probably overrated. After all, God made the world in only six days and rested on the seventh.” - Ernest Hemingway

139. “Be curious about the world in which you live. Look things up. Chase down every reference. Go deeper than anybody else--that's how you'll get ahead.” - Austin Kleon

140. “Tomorrow is no hazardous affair, a day like any other day: tomorrow is the result of many yesterdays and comes with a potent, cumulative effect. I am tomorrow what I chose to be yesterday and the day before. It is not possible that tomorrow I may negate and nullify everything that led me to this present moment.” - Henry Miller

141. “I believe in always being open to learning more through exploration of everything available and following one's sense of curiosity, creativity, and playfulness.” - jay woodman

142. “Creativity and passion dwindle when hungry. Premiums for talent are easier to demand when desperation isn’t part of the equation. If I’m established, I can demand $350 an hour. If I’m desperate, I may accept $5.” - John-Talmage Mathis

143. “What does one do with experience? Do we react negatively, or do we (pro)create from the space of positivity?” - T.F. Hodge

144. “Creativity is the greatest expression of liberty.” - Bryant McGill

145. “A writer or any artist can’t expect to be embraced by the people. I've done records where it seemed like no one listened to them. You write poetry books that maybe 50 people read. And you just keep doing your work because you have to, because it’s your calling.But it’s beautiful to be embraced by the people.Some people have said to me, “Well, don’t you think that kind of success spoils one as an artist? If you’re a punk rocker, you don’t want to have a hit record…”And I say to them, “Fuck you!” One does their work for the people. And the more people you can touch, the more wonderful it is. You don’t do your work and say, “I only want the cool people to read it.” You want everyone to be transported, or hopefully inspired by it.When I was really young, William Burroughs told me, “Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises. Don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned with doing good work. And make the right choices and protect your work. And if you can build a good name, eventually that name will be its own currency.” - Patti Smith

146. “To create today is to create dangerously. Any publication is an act, and that act exposes one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing.” - Albert Camus

147. “What would you do if you saw something nobody else could see?”The tape gun fell out of Luke’s hand, and hit the tiled hearth. He knelt to pick it up, not looking at her. “You mean if I were the only witness to a crime, that sort of thing?”“No. I mean, if there were other people around, but you were the only one who could see something. As if it were invisible to everyone but you.”He hesitated, still kneeling, the dented tape gun gripped in his hand.“I know it sounds crazy,” Clary ventured nervously, “but…”He turned around. His eyes, very blue behind the glasses, rested on her with a look of firm affection. “Clary, you’re an artist, like your mother. That means you see the world in ways that other people don’t. It’s your gift, to see the beauty and the horror in ordinary things. It doesn’t make you crazy—just different. There’s nothing wrong with being different.” - Cassandra Clare