Creativity yields great results when rooted in hope, resilience, and, perhaps most of all, our astounding minds with their capacity for learning and growth. Here are 45 creativity quotes to help you engage your creativity and to inspire you to value creativity in others.
The urge to create follows us through the human life cycle, from our attempts to draw on the walls as children to how we structure and design our spreadsheets as adults. We’re constantly creating in a way that is appealing and functional, not just to us but to others as well.
We should aspire to use our own creativity to improve daily experiences. Solutions are by-products of creativity. When we stay open to new ideas, get into a creative mindset, and are willing to experiment, discoveries and innovation are inevitable.
There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.
~ Edward de Bono
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
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. It seemed obvious to them after a while.
~ Steve Jobs
Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.
~ Mary Lou Cook
If you're trying to be more creative, one of the most important things you can do is increase the volume and diversity of the information to which you are exposed.
American author Jonah Richard Lehrer was a Rhodes scholar at Columbia University, where he studied neuroscience. After his graduation, he delved into media, and he wrote three New York Times bestselling non-fiction books. His stance about productivity and creativity is towards increasing exposure to the knowledge base you have.
According to Lehrer, his background in neuroscience, access to reading material, and other information he was privy to while growing up prepared him for his success in the non-fiction industry. This creativity quote reminds us that consumption is necessary for creativity.
If you want to be a writer, you should be reading everything you have access to. This is how ideas form and are interlinked to create a final product. We should amass the highest possible level of information as this is a recipe for creativity and productivity.
Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.
~ Mary Lou Cook
Creativity involves breaking out of expected patterns in order to look at things in a different way.
~ Edward de Bono
An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail.
~ Edwin Land
One of my early mentors, poet David Wagoner, who divides the creative process into three phases – madman, poet and critic – once told me that you need to find your own magic to stay in the world of creative play.
~ Sonia Gernes
Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.
~ Dorothy Parker
Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.
~ Albert Einstein
To succeed, one must be creative and persistent.
American publisher and businessman John Harold Johnson was the founder of the Johnson Publishing Company. Johnson started as a young African-American man from Arkansas. He undoubtedly worked hard to succeed.
Despite the numerous challenges encountered on his way, he managed to summit the publishing world. Johnson never downplayed the role that creativity took in his career. As he mentioned in one of his books, to succeed, you must be creative and persistent. Johnson claimed this to be his recipe for success in the publishing world. He received several awards for his feat.
Creative risk taking is essential to success in any goal where the stakes are high. Thoughtless risks are destructive, of course, but perhaps even more wasteful is thoughtless caution which prompts inaction and promotes failure to seize opportunity.
Gary Ryan Blair, president of GoalsGuy, has a lot to say on creativity, time management, and recognition of opportunities. Ryan offers a training session for entrepreneurs on how to help them sustain superior performance.
He has written several books and hosts a podcast that benefits organizations and employees worldwide. In one of Ryan’s creativity sessions, he highlighted that risk-taking is essential. But we should creatively assess such risks to avoid making the wrong decisions which could cost firms in terms of time and other resources.
A truly creative person rids him or herself of all self-imposed limitations.
~ Gerald G. Jampolsky
The chief enemy of creativity is "good" sense.
~ Pablo Picasso
To generate creative ideas, you have to start from an unusual place. But to explain those ideas, you have to connect them to something familiar
~ Adam Grant
Make an empty space in any corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it.
~ Dee Hock
Creativity doesn't wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones.
~ Bruce Garrabrandt
When learning is purposeful , creativity blossoms. When creativity blossoms, thinking emanates. When thinking emanates, knowledge is fully lit. When knowledge is lit, economy flourishes.
~ A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.
~ John Cleese
If a window of opportunity appears, don't pull down the shade.
Known as a pioneer of business management, Tom Peters has influenced the way large cooperations work in recent times. Peters is renowned for his 7-S model of business management. He believes that companies need not focus on financial data but on their primary customer, its people.
Companies achieve productivity through the people working for them. Peters has always advocated for employee rights via productivity in his theories. He motivates business owners to focus more on their employees to achieve set goals. When you invest in your employees’ creative processes, their improvements become evident in your business.
Creativity can solve almost any problem . The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.
~ George Lois
Routine kills creative thought.
~ Scarlett Thomas
The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
~ Sylvia Plath
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
~ Victor Hugo
The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.
~ John Maynard Keynes
A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.
Russian-American author, writer, and philosopher, Ayn Rand wrote the best-selling books 'The Fountainhead' and 'Atlas Shrugged.' Rand was renowned for being unreservedly critical of most philosophers known to her, except for Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle.
Rand identified that creativity is born out of the genuine need to succeed and not as a means of competition. Many criticized Rand for her opposing views on other philosophers. Rand’s creativity quote reminds us to choose positive motivation tools. When we start to work with a mindset of overtaking others, the focus shifts from creating solutions to appearing like we are creating solutions.
The qualities I look for in planners or creatives is very much the same thing. Beyond the givens of talent and work ethic, I really look for people who are inspired by the everyday, people who are not afraid of the obvious and are able to reinterpret it into a creative and interesting manner.
CEO of the Australian advertising agency, Droga5, David Droga, has received various top industry awards from Advertising Age. In 2013, 2017, 2019, and 2020, Fast Company named Droga5 as one of their most innovative companies.
Droga never hid the type of people he loves working with. He openly shares that they are creative people. Those who never shy away from identifying with what happens in everyday life can adapt this to creatives and bring such ideas to life. This creativity quote from Droga shows that our creative attempts do not have to be larger-than-life. Simple, everyday creative solutions have the potential to make more impact on more people.
Truly creative people care a little about what they have done, and a lot about what they are doing. Their driving focus is the life force that surges in them now.
~ Alan Cohen
The most talented, thought-provoking, game-changing people are never normal
~ Richard Branson
I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.
~ Albert Einstein
A creative mind is sometimes a troubling place!
~ Jim Butcher
Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order.
~ Virginia Woolf
To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
~ Joseph Chilton Pearce
Your memory and your senses are but the nourishment of your creative impulse.
~ Arthur Rimbaud
The creative adult is the child who survived.
~ Ursula Leguin
What keeps life fascinating is the constant creativity of the soul
~ Deepak Chopra
Creative people must find a balance between having solitude to work on their ideas and seeking new experiences to inform them. Finding that balance is a learning process.
~ Scarlett Thomas
That's the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.
~ Ray Bradbury
Creativity doesn't wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones.
~ Bruce Garrabrandt
The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic.
~ G.K. Chesterton
Creativity itself doesn't care at all about results - the only thing it craves is the process. Learn to love the process and let whatever happens next happen, without fussing too much about it. Work like a monk, or a mule, or some other representative metaphor for diligence. Love the work. Destiny will do what it wants with you, regardless.
American author Elizabeth M. Gilbert is renowned for her 2006 book, Eat, Pray and Love. In 2015, Gilbert wrote a book about creativity titled “Creative Living Beyond Fear”. This book provides insight into Gilbert’s creative process.
Gilbert’s creativity quote reminds us that sometimes, with creative work, we cannot always decide the result. Instead of obsessing over results, work towards being consistent with the process. Show up every day and do the work. As you learn, make corrections and improvements where needed. With good work ethics and the right approach, the results should be impressive.
A creative mindset is in increasingly high demand: employers are vying for workers who are able to dream big and deliver big with the next must-have product. Creative thinking fuels innovation, it leads to new goods and services, creates jobs and delivers substantial economic rewards.
Retired American politician James Baxter Hunt Jr. is a former North Carolina Governor (1977–1985, and 1993–2001). He is the longest-serving governor in the state's history. He spoke about creativity and how global companies are always in search of creative employees.
These creative minds often come up with that single idea that catapults businesses to the next level. Baxter noted that creativity fuels innovation, and it's what all states should strive to instill in the next generations.
When we started work on the iPhone, the motivation there was we all pretty much couldn't stand our phones, and we wanted a better phone.
British-American architectural designer Jonathan Ive is a former Chief Design Officer at Apple. When he was at Apple, he created sophisticated designs for new Apple launches. Ive is a creative person driven by a lack of satisfaction. Ive’s philosophy is to innovate consistently. The fact that something works fine does not mean that we cannot improve upon it.
Based on this philosophy, Ive has won several awards, appointments, and honorary degrees.
Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is the result of good work habits.
American author, dancer, and choreographer Twyla Tharp formed the Twyla Tharp Dance in 1966. This dance uses the combination of author, classical music, and contemporary pop music. Tharp is an author of several creative books on dance, including ‘Push Comes to Shove’ and ‘The Creative Habit’. Tharp shares that creativity is a habit, and the best results come from showing up every day and doing the work.
Creativity is the catalyst that drives innovation. To keep any system moving forward, the people involved should be able to come up with creative improvements. In art, science, technology, and society, creativity is something we should nurture and promote.
By harnessing and valuing creativity in all its forms, we can find meaning, solutions, and peace in a challenging world. In your work and home life, set up a natural environment for the free flow of ideas and inspiration. And perhaps most importantly, seek inspiration for your next creative project, and don't be afraid to get started; creativity is a journey, after all.
Jen’s a passionate environmentalist and sustainability expert. With a science degree from Babcock University Jen loves applying her research skills to craft editorial that connects with our global changemaker and readership audiences centered around topics including zero waste, sustainability, climate change, and biodiversity.
Elsewhere Jen’s interests include the role that future technology and data have in helping us solve some of the planet’s biggest challenges.
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