Being Creative

  1. Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos. Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish to the crowd. I Ching
  2. Every act of creation is first an act of destruction. Pablo Picasso
  3. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few. Shunryu Suzuki
  4. The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions. Antony Jay
  5. Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have. Emile Chartier
  6. The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away. Linus Pauling
  7. If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it. Albert Einstein
  8. The essential part of creativity is not being afraid to fail. Edwin H. Land
  9. Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats. Howard Aiken
  10. It is the pull of opposite poles that stretches souls. And only stretched souls make music. Eric Hoffer
  11. When you try to formalize or socialize creative activity, the only sure result is commercial constipation….The good ideas are all hammered out in agony by individuals, not spewed out by groups. Charles Brower
  12. No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation. Walter Bagehot
  13. Downtime is where we become ourselves, looking into the middle distance, kicking at the curb, lying on the grass or sitting on the stoop and staring at the tedious blue of the summer sky.  I don’t believe you can write poetry, or compose music, or become an actor without downtime, and plenty of it, a hiatus that passes for boredom but is really the quiet moving of the wheels inside that fuel creativity. Anna Quindlen
  14. The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science. Albert Einstein
  15. Creativity thinks up new things. Innovation does new things. There is really no shortage of creativity or of creative people in American business. The shortage is of innovators. The major problem is that so called “creative” people often pass on to others the responsibility for getting down to brass tacks. They have plenty of ideas but little business-like follow-through. They themselves are the bottleneck. They make none of the right kind of effort to help their ideas get a hearing and a try. Theodore Levitt
  16. Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

2 Responses to Being Creative

  1. Kenyon Anderson says:
    August 18, 2011 at 8:45 am

    I also love collecting quotes, Duane. And these are great! Another one I’ve found that’s very similar to #1 above is:

    One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
    ~ Nietzsche

    Thanks for sharing these.

    Kenyon

    Reply
    • Duane Hallock says:
      August 18, 2011 at 10:51 am

      Interesting thought, Kenyon. Thanks for sharing this wisdom from the German philosopher. I once despised chaos, but I am beginning to think of it as an amorphous form of energy that can be harnessed into creativity. I love that quote. Again, thanks for sharing it.

      Reply

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