quotations about creativity
Violence among young people is an aspect of their desire to create. They don't know how to use their energy creatively so they do the opposite and destroy.
ANTHONY BURGESS
attributed, Webster's Quotations
A creative person is someone who imagines what other people cannot. Their value to us lies in expanding our own possibilities. Walls fall. We break out.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
blog, Dec. 2000
Broken symmetry is imperfection, but rich in creativity. The universe is created out of broken symmetry.
AMIT RAY
Meditation: Insights and Inspiration
Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in art, in music, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.
JOHN STEINBECK
East of Eden
Creativity is a potent element of individual life experience and is the soil at the root of much of human progress and endeavour.
MICHAEL A. WEST
Developing Creativity in Organizations
Human creativity uses what is already existing and available and changes it in unpredictable ways.
SYLVANO ARIETI
Creativity: The Magic Synthesis
Creativity is Evolution...
Fashioning a growing idea,
Designing progress to arrive at a pier.
ALFREDA DOYLE
Poetry about Creativity
As the world of creativeness finds itself at the outset placed in the midst of opposition and bound at the same time to proceed on its own course, then it becomes clear that this new world when it becomes a whole and governs all cannot remain permanently within the realm of such stubborn opposites: it must, without giving up its independence, yet return to the world which it had left behind and must attempt to penetrate into it; it must do this most of all on account of the fact that its own development is at stake, for only by some such understanding with things outside itself only by means of a struggle with its oppositions can the life of creativeness in man find its way from the great outlines of its ideal-plan to a full and essential development.
RUDOLF EUCKEN
Knowledge and Life
The search for knowledge about creativity is linked with magic, the demonic, and the divine, yet such knowledge is at the forefront of rational inquiry. Creativity is paradoxical and complex, and the most steadfast investigator is constantly beset with feelings of awe and a sense of mystery as he pursues his inquiry. Creativity encompasses the magical incantations and drawings of primitive man, the appearance of new forms in nature, and the evil genius of Faust. It is a human capacity but it seems to transcend human capacities.
ALBERT ROTHENBERG
The Creativity Question
To me, creativity is a vision and the actualization of that vision. This vision is a unit; it is complete and pregnant. Just as night gives birth to day, the seed to a plant, an ovum to a child; so too a creative vision gives birth indefinitely and its actualization produces scientific, artistic or religious forms.
A. REZA ARASTEH & J. D. ARASTEH
Creativity in the Life-cycle
Creativity follows its own rules.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
The Butlerian Jihad
Creativity is one of the most positive, life-affirming traits of humanity, and people in all walks of life report that they feel at their peek and in flow when they are being their most creative.
ROBERT KEITH SAWYER
Explaining Creativity
It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
A Writer's Diary, May 11, 1920
The fear of being wrong is the prime inhibitor of the creative process.
ROBERTA JEAN BRYANT
Anybody Can Write
Creativity is the ability to see relationships where none exist.
THOMAS DISCH
attributed, Creativity and Personality Type
Creativity is a conceptual, abstracted system. It is not tangible, but many of its products are. Creative people work in the tangible world, producing real products.
WILLIAM G. COVINGTON
JR., Creativity and General Systems Theory
Creativity means learning where the rules exist, and then breaking them! Saying, "It's better this way." But you have to know the rules in order to break them with any grace.
ALAN ARKIN
New Mexico Magazine, Jun. 2011
Creativity is a puzzle, a paradox, some say a mystery. Inventors, scientists, and artists rarely know how their ideas arise. They mention intuition, but cannot say how it works. Most psychologists cannot tell us much about it either. What's more, many people assume that there will never be a scientific theory of creativity--for how could science possibly explain fundamental novelties? As if all this were not daunting enough, the apparent unpredictability of creativity seems to outlaw any systemic explanation whether scientific or historical.
MARGARET BODEN
Dimensions of Creativity
Creativity is purposeful and involves effort to make something work, to make something better, more meaningful, or more beautiful.
ALANE J. STARKO
Creativity in the Classroom
Creativity can replace conformity as the primary mode of social being.... We can cling to that which is passing, or has already passed, or we can remain accessible to--even surrender to--the creative process, without insisting that we know in advance the ultimate outcome for us, our institutions, or our planet. To accept this challenge is to cherish freedom, to embrace life, and to find meaning.
STEPHEN NACHMANOVITCH
Free Play