Here’s the best collection of 338 creativity quotes from famous artists, innovators, businessmen and leaders. These quotes will satisfy your curiosity as well as inspire to be more creative in work and life. Kids, students and adults can use these quotes when they lack inspiration to be creative.
Creativity Quotes
1. Action is eloquence. – William Shakespeare
2. Imitation is suicide. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
3. Creativity takes courage. – Henri Matisse
4. Stay hungry. Stay foolish. – Steve Jobs
5. This is who the fuck I am. – Lady Gaga
6. Ideas come from everything. – Alfred Hitchcock
7. Life is short, art is long. – Hippocrates
8. Replace fear with curiosity. – Steven Spielberg
9. Life begins where fear ends. – Osho
10. I shut my eyes in order to see. – Paul Gauguin
11. Routine kills creative thought. – Scarlett Thomas
12. Chance favors the prepared mind. – Louis Pasteur
13. Find something only you can say. – James Dickey
14. Art is communication of feelings. – Bruce Lee
15. Be Yourself. Embrace your quirks. – Ed Sheerhan
16. Creativity is an act of defiance. – Twyla Tharp
17. Art is what you can get away with. – Andy Warhol
18. The best art divides the audience. – Rick Rubin
19. Every artist was first an amateur. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
20. Art is a line around your thoughts. – Gustav Klimt
21. If you can dream it, you can do it. – Walt Disney
22. Creativity is a continual surprise. – Ray Bradbury
23. There’s the whole world at your feet. – Mary Poppins
24. Of all lies, art is the least untrue. – Gustave Flaubert
25. Great art picks up where nature ends. – Marc Chagall
26. Creativity is contagious. Pass it on. – Albert Einstein
27. If it doesn’t sell; it isn’t creative. – David Ogilvy
28. To be an artist is to believe in life. – Henry Moore
29. Without freedom, there is no creation. – Jiddu Krishnamurti
30. Creativity is intelligence having fun. – Albert Einstein
31. Creativity is as important as literacy. – Ken Robinson
32. Good artists copy, great artists steal. – Pablo Picasso
33. I am not strange. I am just not normal. – Salvador Dali
34. Cowardice is the most terrible of vices. – Mikhail Bulgakov
35. There’s a way to do it better – find it. – Thomas Edison
36. Good art inspires; Good design motivates. – Otl Aicher
37. I dream my painting and i paint my dream. – Vincent van Gogh
38. Half of any creative work is observation. – @AmuseChimp
39. You don’t take a photograph, you make it. – Ansel Adams
40. To have a great idea, have a lot of them. – Thomas Edison
41. Originality is the best form of rebellion. – Mike Sasso
42. You don’t make art out of good intentions. – Gustave Flaubert
43. Simplicity and complexity need each other. – John Maeda
44. Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas. – Donatella Versace
45. Create with the heart; build with the mind. – Criss Jami
46. Use your imagination to fill in the blanks. – Barbara Corcoran
47. So little of what could happen does happen. – Salvador Dali
48. The chief enemy of creativity is good sense. – Pablo Picasso
49. The most dangerous idea is silencing people. – Naval Ravikant
50. The urge to destroy is also a creative urge. – Mikhail Bakunin
51. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. – Sylvia Plath
52. It is indeed difficult to convey simplicity. – Bruce Lee
53. You were born an original. Don’t die a copy. – John Mason
54. Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken. – Oscar Wilde
55. Creativity is obscured by the conscious mind. – Naval Ravikant
56. I don’t need time. What I need is a deadline. – Duke Ellington
57. The world is but a canvas to the imagination. – Henry David Thoreau
58. Genius is only a great aptitude for patience. – George-Louis Leclerc
59. Requirement to be an artist: purity of heart. – Bruce Lee
60. Everything alters me, but nothing changes me. – Salvador Dali
61. When all think alike, then no one is thinking. – Walter Lippman
62. There is intelligence when you are not afraid. – Bruce Lee
63. My life didn’t please me, so I created my life. – Coco Chanel
64. Almost all creativity requires purposeful play. – Abraham Maslow
65. The value of achievement lies in the achieving. – Albert Einstein
66. Why fit in when you were born to stand out? – Dr. Seuss
67. You are more creative when you don’t need money. – @orangebook_
68. If your dream only includes you, it’s too small. – Ava DuVernay
69. Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning. – William Ward
70. The best people want to work the big challenges. – Larry Page
71. The people who made Mac are sort of on the edge. – Steve Jobs
72. We know what we are, but know not what we may be. – William Shakespeare
73. When we build, let us think that we build forever. – John Ruskin
74. Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence. – Osho
75. Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it. – Salvador Dali
76. Curiosity will conquer fear more than bravery will. – James Stephenson
77. The public wants work which flatters its illusions. – Gustave Flaubert
78. We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents. – Bob Ross
79. Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. – Twyla Tharp
80. Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started. – Austin Kleon
81. Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working. – Pablo Picasso
82. We adore chaos because we love to produce order. – M. C. Escher
83. Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future. – Oscar Wilde
84. Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings. – Salvador Dali
85. Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. – Carl Sagan
86. He who would be a man must therefore be a nonconformist. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
87. Blessed are the curious, for they shall have adventures. – Lovelle Drachman
88. Great is the human who has not lost his childlike heart. – Mencius
89. Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties. – Erich Fromm
90. I feel there is nothing more artistic than loving people. – Vincent van Gogh
91. Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes. – Oscar Wilde
92. Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous. – Bill Moyers
93. If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes. – Pablo Picasso
94. My humor is my creativity, and my skepticism is a gift. – J. Tillman
95. Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise. – Julia Cameron
96. Creating opportunities means looking where others are not. – Mark Cuban
97. To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. – Thomas Edison
98. I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality. – Frida Kahlo
99. I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there. – Oscar Wilde
100. Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing. – Salvador Dali
101. Creative people need time to just sit around and do nothing. – Austin Kleon
102. Even if the world gives up on you, you always have yourself. – Lady Gaga
103. Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction. – Picasso
104. It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves. – William Shakespeare
105. Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. – Oscar Wilde
106. The inner fire is the most important thing mankind possesses. – Edith Södergran
107. If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint. – Edward Hopper
108. The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. – William James
109. Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected. – William Plomer
110. There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. – William Shakespeare
111. Boredom always precedes a period of great creativity. – Robert M. Pirsig
112. Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist. – René Magritte
113. The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination. – Albert Einstein
114. Perfection is no small thing, but it is made up of small things. – Michelangelo
115. Fear leads to self-doubt which is the worst enemy of creativity. – David Ogilvy
116. Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted. – Martin Luther King Jr
117. You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. – Maya Angelou
118. Sensitivity is not possible if you are afraid of this, that, etc. – Bruce Lee
119. Pretend to be making something until you actually make something. – Austin Kleon
120. Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist. – Pablo Picasso
121. The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. – Dorothy Parker
122. So go on, get angry. But keep your mouth shut and go do your work. – Austin Kleon
123. Absurdity and anti-absurdity are the two poles of creative energy. – Karl Lagerfeld
124. Imagination is an opportunity to put your mind to work – for good. – Sam Horn
125. It’s no accident that AHA and HAHA are spelled almost the same way. – Mitch Ditkoff
126. A person who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. – Albert Einstein
127. It’s only after you’re bored that you’re gonna have the great ideas. – Naval Ravikant
128. Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change. – Brené Brown
129. Art, freedom and creativity will change society faster than politics. – Victor Pinchuk
130. The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live. – Auguste Rodin
131. Logic will get you from a to b. Imagination will take you everywhere. – Albert Einstein
132. One of the only ways to get out a tight box is to invent your way out. – Jeff Bezos
133. Rational thoughts never drive people’s creativity the way emotions do. – Neil deGrasse Tyson
134. The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible. – David Ogilvy
135. The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration. – Claude Monet
136. Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination. – Oscar Wilde
137. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of our time. – John Stuart Mill
138. The question isn’t who is going to let me; It’s who is going to stop me. – Ayn Rand
139. The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic. – G.K. Chesterton
140. The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. – William James
141. An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all. – Oscar Wilde
142. Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. – Chuck Close
143. If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old. – Peter F. Drucker
144. Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas. – Austin Kleon
145. Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do. – Edgar Degas
146. There are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something. – Thomas A. Edison
147. You have to be willing to ask questions that almost no one else would ask. – Samantha Bee
148. One sure-fire way to stay creative: force yourself to learn something new. – Harvey Mackay
149. Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. – Stella Adler
150. Thinking about design is hard, but not thinking about it can be disastrous. – Ralph Caplan
151. Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature. – Eric Hoffer
152. The most talented, thought-provoking, game-changing people are never normal. – Richard Branson
153. The thing about creativity is, people are going to laugh at it. Get over it. – Twyla Tharp
154. One must not merely copy but try to convey the significance of what you see. – Bruce Lee
155. The only way to escape the corruptible effect of praise is to go on working. – Albert Einstein
156. A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool. – William Shakespeare
157. Have a healthy disregard for the impossible and actually build new solutions. – Larry Page
158. Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way. – William James
159. The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose. – James Baldwin
160. The true use of art is, first, to cultivate the artist’s own spiritual nature. – George Inness
161. Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express. – Brenda Ueland
162. A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future. – Albert Einstein
163. Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their dreams. – Lady Gaga
164. A child’s mind is not a container to be filled but rather a fire to be kindled. – Dorothea Brande
165. Obsession and distance are interesting co-conspirators in the art of creativity. – Brian Norgard
166. Solitude is creativity’s best friend, and solitude is refreshment for our souls. – Naomi Judd
167. I can always be distracted by love, but eventually I get horny for my creativity. – Gilda Radner
168. If you are not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original. – Ken Robinson
169. Laughing can serve you in dark moments and even help you crawl your way back out. – Ryan Reynolds
170. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better. – John Updike
171. When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this – you haven’t. – Thomas A. Edison
172. We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. – Albert Einstein
173. Ignore all hatred and criticism. live for what you create, and die protecting it. – Lady Gaga
174. Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. – Pablo Picasso
175. Give me two hours a day of activity, and I’ll take the other twenty-two in dreams. – Salvador Dali
176. If you’re not doing some things that are crazy, then you’re doing the wrong things. – Larry Page
177. Know where to find the information and how to use it. That’s the secret of success. – Albert Einstein
178. Great things are not done by impulse, but a series of small things brought together. – Vincent van Gogh
179. Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. – Scott Adams
180. Creative people are often found either disagreeable or intimidating by mediocrities. – Criss Jami
181. Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not. – Pablo Picasso
182. Persistence. Perfection. Patience. Power. Prioritize your passion. It keeps you sane. – Criss Jami
183. A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
184. The works must be conceived with fire in the soul but executed with clinical coolness. – Joan Miró
185. Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced. – Leo Tolstoy
186. We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down. – Kurt Vonnegut
187. Make an empty space in any corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it. – Dee Hock
188. The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique. – Walt Disney
189. The road to creativity passes so close to the madhouse and often detours or ends there. – Ernest Becker
190. You’re probably on the right track if you feel like a sidewalk worm during a rainstorm. – Larry Page
191. It took me a long time to accept myself, people, and once I did, it was on and crackin. – Leslie Jones
192. I have nothing to explain. As for being misunderstood, I have grown accustomed to that. – Fan BingBing
193. To express oneself honestly, not lying to oneself; that, my friend, is very hard to do. – Bruce Lee
194. Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
195. Human beings are the only creatures who are allowed to fail. If an ant fails, it’s dead. – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
196. Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth. – Rumi
197. The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before. – Neil Gaiman
198. Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work. – Gustave Flaubert
199. Creativity comes from looking for the unexpected and stepping outside your own experience. – Masaru Ibuka
200. Our ability to grow is directly proportional to an ability to entertain the uncomfortable. – Twyla Tharp
201. The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. – Albert Einstein
202. When you’re in a rut, you have to question everything except your ability to get out of it. – Twyla Tharp
203. The artist is not a special kind of person; rather each person is a special kind of artist. – Ananda Coomaraswamy
204. Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion. – Jack Kerouac
205. Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality. – Beatrix Potter
206. The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers. – Arthur Koestler
207. It’s easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It’s a lot more difficult to perform one. – Chuck Palahniuk
208. Creative thinking is not a mystical talent. It is a skill that can be practiced and nurtured. – Edward de Bono
209. Your own reasons to make are reason enough. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart. – Elizabeth Gilbert
210. I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. – Dr. Seuss
211. When you can do a common thing in an uncommon way; you will command the attention of the world. – George Washington Carver
212. Non-judgment quiets the internal dialogue, and this opens once again the doorway to creativity. – Deepak Chopra
213. The more time you spend being quiet and looking in, your intuition grows and you trust it more. – Rick Rubin
214. No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist. – Oscar Wilde
215. It’s better to create something that others criticise than to create nothing & criticise others. – Ricky Gervais
216. The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly. – Julian Barnes
217. Look closely at the present you’re constructing. It should look like the future you are dreaming. – Alice Walker
218. If you ever find that you’re the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room. – Austin Kleon
219. I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen. – Ernest Hemingway
220. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos. – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
221. You have to do stuff that average people don’t understand because those are the only good things. – Andy Warhol
222. There’s a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering. – Elon Musk
223. Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people. – Leo Burnett
224. The closer man gets to the unknown, the more inventive he becomes – the quicker he adopts new ways. – Buckminster Fuller
225. I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express in words afterwards. – Albert Einstein
226. Keep your sense of humor, my friend; if you don’t have a sense of humor it just isn’t funny anymore. – Wavy Gravy
227. Outrageous behavior, also known as the lunatic fringe, is the seed bed of innovation and creativity. – Joel Salatin
228. To make something new in fashion, you have to stay in a little bit of mad place and do a revolution. – Alessandro Michele
229. Do not allow people to dim your shine because they are blinded. Tell them to put on some sunglasses. – Lady Gaga
230. Too much planning implies you’ve got it all under control. That’s boring, unrealistic, and dangerous. – Twyla Tharp
231. Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. It is a process; it’s not random. – Ken Robinson
232. Creativity requires input, and that’s what research is. You’re gathering material with which to build. – Gene Luen Yang
233. Remember this when you’re struggling for a big idea. You’re much better off scratching for a small one. – Twyla Tharp
234. What sets you apart can feel like a burden, and it’s not. A lot of the time, it’s what makes you great. – Emma Stone
235. There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. – Oscar Wilde
236. Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. – John Steinbeck
237. Innovation is simply seeing and connecting new dots in new ways. It is doing the opposite of the always. – Sam Horn
238. I think that you’ve got to make something that pleases you and hope that other people feel the same way. – Thomas Keller
239. Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. – Thomas Edison
240. Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning. – Albert Einstein
241. In the end, creativity isn’t just the things we choose to put in, it’s the things we choose to leave out. – Austin Kleon
242. Art has the role in education of helping children become like themselves instead of more like everyone else. – Sydney Gurewitz Clemens
243. Creativity involves not only years of conscious preparation and training but unconscious preparation as well. – Oliver Sacks
244. Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. – Thomas Edison
245. It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect. – Colson Whitehead
246. Self-expression is important. Only the self-sufficient stand alone – most people follow the crowd and imitate. – Bruce Lee
247. Think left and think right, and think low and think high; Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try. – Dr. Seuss
248. Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes and having fun. – Mary Lou Cook
249. The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art. – Junot Diaz
250. For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity. – Jean Dubuffet
251. If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced. – Vincent van Gogh
252. Creativity is people who care enough to keep thinking about something until they find the simplest way to do it. – Tim Cook
253. It may be that our cosmic curiosity is a genetically-encoded force that we illuminate when we look up and wonder. – Neil deGrasse Tyson
254. Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity. – Charles Mingus
255. The important thing for you is to be alert, to question, to find out, so that your own initiative may be awakened. – Bruce Lee
256. There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time. – Coco Chanel
257. All I’m writing is just what I feel, that’s all. I just keep it almost naked. And probably the words are so bland. – Jimi Hendrix
258. Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing. – Georgia O’Keeffe
259. Involve groups in the creative process and you inevitably end up with a pile of pleasing, socially-acceptable lies. – Naval Ravikant
260. Collect books, even if you don’t plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library. – John Waters
261. Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by. – Austin Kleon
262. This is very important because I work constantly in the moment of sleep. All of my best ideas come through my dreams. – Salvador Dali
263. Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion. – Simon Sinek
264. Creativity is based on the belief that there’s no particular virtue in doing things they way they’ve always been done. – Rudolph Flesch
265. Our task, regarding creativity, is to help children climb their own mountains, as high as possible. No one can do more. – Loris Malaguzzi
266. The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny!’. – Isaac Asimov
267. The field of creativity that exists within each individual is freed by moving out of ideas of wrong-doing or right doing. – Angeles Arrien
268. 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
269. The leader is one who, out of the clutter, brings simplicity… Out of discord, harmony… And out of difficulty, opportunity. – Albert Einstein
270. Your ego can become an obstacle to your work. If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity. – Marina Abramovic
271. Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. – Martin Luther King Jr
272. We are gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make ‘me-too’ products. For us, it’s always the next dream. – Steve Jobs
273. The thing is to become a master and, in your old age, to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing. – Ernest Hemingway
274. Social media has colonized what was once a sacred space occupied by emptiness: the space reserved for thought and creativity. – Mahershala Ali
275. All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate. – Julio Cortázar
276. It is not daily increase but daily decrease – hack away the unessential! The closer to the source, the less wastage there is. – Bruce Lee
277. If you’re to create something powerful and important, you must at the very least be driven by an equally powerful inner force. – Ryan Holiday
278. Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual. – Arthur Koestler
279. There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. – Sophia Loren
280. Imagination is the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not; it is the foundation of all invention and innovation. – J. K. Rowling
281. Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will. – George Bernard Shaw
282. When we engage in what we are naturally suited to do, our work takes on the quality of play and it is play that stimulates creativity. – Linda Naiman
283. It is often easier to make progress on mega-ambitious dreams. Since no one else is crazy enough to do it, you have little competition. – Larry Page
284. Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit. – E. E. Cummings
285. 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
286. We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and trying new things, because we are curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. – Walt Disney
287. I’d rather believe in my own choice and see it all go wrong than do something I’m not fully convinced of and later feel guilty about it. – Alicia Keys
288. In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone. – Rollo May
289. Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self. – Erich Fromm
290. The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. – Carl Jung
291. To live is to express, and to express you have to create. Creation is never merely repetition. To live is to express oneself freely in creation. – Bruce Lee
292. There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about. – Helen Frankenthaler
293. 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
294. When I am completely myself, entirely alone during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. – Mozart
295. The question is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists. – Martin Luther King Jr
296. Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them. – Anais Nin
297. While ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily missed, so easily compromised, so easily just squished. – Jony Ive
298. A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow. – Charles Brower
299. You have to walk, and create the way by your walking; you will not find a ready-made path. It is not so cheap, to reach to the ultimate realization of truth. – Osho
300. Creativity is an area in which younger people have a tremendous advantage, since they have an endearing habit of always questioning past wisdom and authority. – Bill Hewlett
301. It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it. – Jacob Bronowski
302. You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out. – Steve Jobs
303. Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn’t work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach. – Roger Von Oech
304. 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
305. Why do people not create or innovate? We have got to abandon that sense of amazement in the face of creativity, as if it were a miracle if anybody created anything. – Abraham Maslow
306. Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art. – Andy Warhol
307. It seems like the world is crumbling out there, but it is actually a really great time in your life to get a little crazy, follow your curiosity and be ambitious about it. – Larry Page
308. Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing. – Thomas Huxley
309. When you make music or write or create, it’s really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you’re writing about at the time. – Lady Gaga
310. Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. – Steve Jobs
311. Reinvent new combinations of what you already own. Improvise. Become more creative. Not because you have to, but because you want to. Evolution is the secret for the next step. – Karl Lagerfeld
312. Reading, conversation, environment, culture, heroes, mentors, nature – all are lottery tickets for creativity. Scratch away at them and you’ll find out how big a prize you’ve won. – Twyla Tharp
313. Others inspire us, information feeds us, practice improves our performance, but we need quiet time to figure things out, to emerge with new discoveries, to unearth original answers. – Ester Buchholz
314. Everything is raw material. Everything is relevant. Everything is usable. Everything feeds into my creativity. But without proper preparation, I cannot see it, retain it, and use it. – Twyla Tharp
315. Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience. – Henry David Thoreau
316. If you only do what you know and do it very, very well, chances are that you won’t fail. You’ll just stagnate, and your work will get less and less interesting, and that’s failure by erosion. – Twyla Tharp
317. Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don’t come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they’re having a piss. – Banksy
318. Google everything. I mean everything. Google your dreams, Google your problems. Don’t ask a question before you Google it. You’ll either find the answer or you’ll come up with a better question. – Austin Kleon
319. 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. – Hilary Mantel
320. Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem. – Rollo May
321. Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use – do the work you want to see done. – Austin Kleon
322. Consistency, like scheduling, is not the optimal way to do creative work. Best creative work is often done when you are in the mood. It cannot be scheduled in advanced or rationed equally between working days. – The Ancient Sage
323. Adequate form [in art] requires: 1) Individuality rather than imitative repetitiousness 2) Brevity rather than bulkiness 3) Clarity rather than obscurity 4) Simplicity of expression rather than complexity of form. – Bruce Lee
324. I think boredom is the beginning of every authentic act. Boredom opens up the space, for new engagements. Without boredom, no creativity. If you are not bored, you just stupidly enjoy the situation in which you are. – Slavoj Žižek
325. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. – Rainer Maria Rilke
326. Many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. – J.K. Rowling
327. The first and most important thing an individual can do is to become an individual again, decontrol himself, train himself as to what is going on and win back as much independent ground for himself as possible. – William S. Burroughs
328. Creativity is not just for artists. It’s for business people looking for a new way to close a sale; it’s for engineers trying to solve a problem; it’s for parents who want their children to see the world in more than one way. – Twyla Tharp
329. Not everybody will get it. People will misinterpret you and what you do. They might even call you names. So get comfortable with being misunderstood, disparaged, or ignored — the trick is to be too busy doing your work to care. – Austin Kleon
330. To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it. – Osho
331. There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. – Martha Graham
332. A busy calendar and a busy mind will destroy your ability to do great things in this world. If you want to be able to do great things, whether you’re a musician, or whether you’re an entrepreneur, or whether you’re an investor, you need free time and you need a free mind. – Naval Ravikant
333. How to unlock creativity: slow down, study another field, get into nature, get out of office, music (lots), sketch, cardio before/after, nibble on small ideas, throw stuff away, atomize the work, look for orthogonal inspiration, breathe, learn about circadian rhythm, paint. – Brian Norgard
334. In order to create you have to believe in your ability to do so and that often means excluding whole chunks of normal life, and, of course, pumping yourself up as much as possible as a way of keeping on. Sort of cheering for yourself in the great football stadium of life. – T.C. Boyle
335. Your brain gets too comfortable in your everyday surroundings. You need to make it uncomfortable. You need to spend some time in another land, among people that do things differently than you. Travel makes the world look new, and when the world looks new, our brains work harder. – Austin Kleon
336. It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom. Without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. – Albert Einstein
337. Each person comes into this world with a specific destiny – he has something to fulfill, some message has to be delivered, some work has to be completed. You are not here accidentally–you are here meaningfully. There is a purpose behind you. The whole intends to do something through you. – Osho
338. Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to“. – Jim Jarmusch