Creators on Creating
Please send us your favorite quote about creativity.
There's nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly. Buckminster Fuller, American designer and architect, 1895-1983. (Quoted by Ellen Goldberger.)
Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream. Malcolm Muggeridge, British journalist, satirist and military spy, 1903-1990. (Quoted by Devyn Frank.)
The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them. Albert Einstein (1879-1955), American physicist born in Germany, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. (Quoted by Allie Eichler.)
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties. Erich Fromm, American psychoanalyst, author and philosopher, born in Germany, 1900-1980. (Quoted by Alex Healy.)
Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things. Ray Bradbury, American science fiction author, 1920-. (Quoted by Zoe Gaby-Smith.)
Creativity--like human life itself--begins in darkness. Julia Cameron, American artist, poet, playwright, journalist, filmmaker, composer, teacher, author and playwright, 1948-. (Quoted by Micheala Maxey.)
The world is but a canvas to the imagination. Henry David Thoreau, American naturalist and author, 1817-1862. (Quoted by Rachael Nystrom.)
You can't wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club. Jack London, American author, 1876-1916. (Quoted by Rachael Nystrom.)
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. Charlie Mingus, American jazz musician and composer, 1922-1979. (Quoted by Caitlin Dingley.)
Some men see things as they are and ask "Why?" I dream of things that never were, and ask, "Why not?" Robert F. Kennedy (quoting George Bernard Shaw), US Attorney General and NY Senator, 1925-1968. (Quoted by Devan Meeker.)
What we call "creative work" ought not to be called work at all, because it isn't...I imagine that Thomas Edison never did a day's work in his last fifty years. Stephen Leacock, Canadian economist and humorist, 1869-1944. (Quoted by Jen Gleason.)
I learned three important things in college: to use a library, to memorize quickly and visually, to drop asleep any time given a horizontal surface and 15 minutes. What I could not learn was to think creatively on schedule. Agnes DeMille, American dancer and choreographer, 1908-1993. (Quoted by Jen Gleason.)
All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter and sculptor, 1881-1973. (Quoted by Allie Norton.)
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist. Oscar Wilde, Irish author and playwright, 1854-1900. (Quoted by Jahan Rajabi.)
Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training. Anna Freud, British psychoanalyst born in Austria, 1895-1982. (Quoted by Jahan Rajabi.)
One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries. A.A. Milne, British writer, 1882-1956. (Quoted by Abigail Davenport.)