Quotes about creativity
page 12

“Science, and physics in particular, has developed out of the Newtonian paradigm of mechanics. In this world view, every phenomenon we observe can be reduced to a collection of atoms or particles, whose movement is governed by the deterministic laws of nature. Everything that exists now has already existed in some different arrangement in the past, and will continue to exist so in the future. In such a philosophy, there seems to be no place for novelty or creativity”

Francis Heylighen (1960) Belgian cyberneticist

Source: The science of self-organization and adaptivity (2001), p.253

World, Law, Nature, Science

“The nature of creative thinking runs counter to the nature of dealing w/its output. Ability & system to do both is freedom. GTD.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

2 July 2010 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/17537630593 Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

Nature, Thinking, Freedom

“What do I really want to do, and what will help me continue to be creative, and what will lead me towards being the artist that I want to be in the end.”

Hilary Hahn (1979) American violinist

Why Violinist Hilary Hahn Will Never Just Stick to the Classical Repertoire (2012)

Help

“You need a mind open to possibility, conditioned to love the creative spirit we all have inside ourselves.”

Yanni (1954) Greek pianist, keyboardist, composer, and music producer

Yanni in Words. Miramax Books. Co-author David Rensin

Love

“It was in reading Tristam Shandy that I noticed how it is primarily men who gravitate towards the game-playing self-reflexive style. There is an alienation from emotion in it, a Nervous Nelly fear of letting go and being “exposed.” As an attitude towards life, it betrays a perpetual adolescence. Those who hurled themselves after Derrida were not the most sophisticated but the most pretentious, and least creative members of my generation of academics.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, p. 231

Life, Men, Fear, Game

“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me... is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.
But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.
It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Ira Glass (1959) American radio personality

The Taste Gap: Ira Glass on the Secret of Creative Success, Animated in Living Typography http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/29/ira-glass-success-daniel-sax/ at brainpickings.org This American Life

People, Disappointment, Way, Game

“I tell you there is no such thing as creative hate!”

Willa Cather book The Song of the Lark

Part I, Ch. 9
The Song of the Lark (1915)

Hate

“From a management standpoint, it is very important to know how to unleash people's inborn creativity. My concept is that anybody has creative ability, but very few people know how to use it.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 164.

People

“These three activities, then, intelligence, love and creative action, which are so closely involved in one another, I cannot but feel to be intrinsically good. In their outstanding expressions they are good in an outstanding degree. Together they form the distinctively human kind of behaviour.”

Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) British novelist and philosopher

Other texts

Love, Feeling, Intelligence

“The era that humanity has entered is an era of industrial development and therefore the organisation of artistic elements must be applied to the design of the material elements of everyday life, i. e. to industry or to so-called production. The new industrial production, in which artistic creativity must participate, will differ radically from the traditional aesthetic approach to the object, in that primarily attention will be focused not on the artistic decoration of the object (applied art), but on the artistic organisation of the object in accordance with the principles of creating the most utilitarian object.... If any of the different types of fine art (i. e., easel painting, drawing, engraving, sculpture, etc.) can still retain some purpose, they will do so only * 1. while they remain as the laboratory phase in our search for essential new forms * 2. insofar as they serve as supportive projects and schemes for constructions and utilitarian and industrially manufactured objects that have yet to be realised”

Lyubov Popova (1889–1924) Russian artist

Liubov Popova, untitled manuscript, signed and dated December 1921, Manuscript Department, State Tretjakov Gallery, Moscow, (fond 148, op.17, l. 3–4); transl. John Bowlt; the same text is reproduced in Women Artists of the Russian Avant-Garde 1910–1930, Cologne 1979, p. 68

Life, Art, Search, Support

“Too long,” said my father, “have we lived under the terror of the matchless perfection of the Demiurge. Too long has the perfection of his handiwork paralysed our own creativity. We do not wish to compete with him. We have no ambition to rival him. We wish merely to be creators in our own, lower sphere. We crave creativity for ourselves. We crave the joy of creation. In a word, we crave Demiurgy.”

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“A Treatise on Mannequins” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/shops/treatise1.htm His father, Creativity

Joy, Perfection

“Students of the human mind have long noted its ability to mimic internally the positive notions and transformations of objects in the external world. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the British empiricist David Hume wrote that to "join incongruous shapes and appearances costs the imagination no more trouble than to conceive the most natural and familiar objects" and that "this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us by the senses and experience."”

Roger Shepard (1929) American psychologist

Source: Mental images and their transformations. 1982, p. 1

World, Imagination, Nature, Sense

“The oneness of the universe, and the oneness of each element of the universe, repeat themselves to the crack of doom in the creative advance from creature to creature, each creature including in itself the whole of history and exemplifying the self-identity of things and their mutual diversities.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Pt. III, ch. 1, sec. 7.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

History, Universe

“In the judgment of the most competent living mathematicians, Fräulein Noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1930s, Obituary for Emmy Noether (1935)

Women, Education, Mathematics

“One is not quite certain that creativeness in the arts, literature, and science functions best in an environment of absolute freedom. Chances are that a relatively mild tyranny stimulates creativeness.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Entry (1956)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

Art, Literature, Freedom, Science

“Once you have a staff of prepared, intelligent, and energetic people, the next step is to motivate them to be creative.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 160.

People, Intelligence, Motivation

“The doctrine which thus comes to light, that in art man not only shares literally in the creative office of God, but enriches Nature with new members that express its divine Ground in a still higher form, will seem to many overbold — extravagant and irreverent. But its advocates are neither few nor inconsiderable; it is supported by the greatest names.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Art-Principle as Represented in Poetry, p.188-9

God, Art, Support, Nature

“To eliminate sex from a book is to eliminate the great creative force in the world. Out of the sexual instinct rises all the art, you know. … No eunuch ever wrote a book.”

Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) Novelist

1970s-, The Captains, the Kings, and Taylor Caldwell (1978)

Books, World, Art, Sex

“I feel sorry for kids these days. They get so much homework. Remember the days when we put a belt around our two books and carried them home? Now they're dragging a suitcase. They have school all day, then homework from six until eleven. There's no time left to be creative. The hardest part for me is when my thirteen-year-old is complaining about the workload. I agree with him. I'm supposed to be responsible and support the teacher. But it's like, "You're right, son. This is bullshit."”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Esquire interview (2006)

Books, School, Feeling, Home

“One had better not rush, otherwise dung comes out rather than creative work.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (August 18, 1891)
Letters

“In war, men lose what makes them great. Their creativity. Their wisdom. Their joy. All that's left is their utility. War is not monstrous for making corpses of men so much as it is for making machines of them. And woe to those who have no use in war except to feed the machines.”

Pierce Brown book Morning Star

Source: Morning Star (2016), Ch. 25: Exodus

Wisdom, Men, War, Joy

“There is this view that if you are not tormented you cannot be vital and creative. I would like to think that is not true.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

Jasper Gerard (July 1, 2001) "Scully knows what it's like to be an alien - Interview", The Sunday Times, p. News Review 5.
2000s

Thinking

“My monochrome pictures are not my definite works, but the preparation for my works. They are the left-overs from the creative processes, the ashes. My pictures, after all, are only the title-deeds to my property which I have to produce when I am asked to prove that I am a proprietor.”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

In 1957; p. 35
before 1960, "Yves Klein, 1928 – 1962, Selected Writings"

“The biggest thing I learned was, especially the way I operate and how I am as a person, if I'm going to do a creative endeavor, I need to have full, complete control. Top to bottom. And with my book and website, I always had that. With the website, definitely, with the book, basically, with the movie…I didn't in a lot of ways. Nils and I, we had a lot of control, more control probably than almost any first time movie makers do within a normal studio system. We were in the middle between independent and not, because someone else paid for everything, and they kind of let us do what we wanted, but then once the movie was done creatively, it went in a direction that I did not want it to go, and there was nothing I could really do about it. It's hard enough to swim in that movie current by yourself, but when you've got weights tied to you and someone pulling you in a different direction, it's almost impossible. You need to pick a direction and go with it. If you're going to be a big studio movie, go be that, and if you're going to go be a rogue independent film, go be that. We had different people with different levels of authority on the movie that pulled us in different directions, and it just doesn't work. Either be in control or let someone else do it, but don't…too many chefs. I'm going to be better next time. Failure instructs, failure improves. Failure shouldn't deter you, unless you're just bad at it.”

Tucker Max (1975) Internet personality; blogger; author

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC6zdVKoNr8 (March 2010).

People, Books, Way, Failure

“At present we are living through an unusual period in time a new cosmic creation has become reality in the world, a creativity within ourselves which pervades our consciousness.... in this way the artist became the foundation on which progress in the reconstruction of life could advance beyond the frontiers of the all-seeing eye and the all-hearing ear. Thus a picture was no longer an anecdote nor a lyric poem nor a lecture on morality nor a feast for the eye but a sign and symbol of this new conception of the world which comes from within us.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

1915 - 1925, Suprematism' in World Reconstruction (1920)

Life, World, Way, Reality

“In the end if the system still ‘works’ it is because women guarantee unpaid transportation… because they repair their homes, because they make meals when there are no canteens, because they spend more time shopping around, because they look after others’ children when there are no nurseries, and because they offer ‘free entertainment’ to the producers when there is a social vacuum and the absence of cultural creativity. If these women who ‘do nothing’ ever stopped to do ‘only that’, the whole urban structure as we know it would become completely incapable of maintaining its function”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: City, Class and Power, 1978, p. 177–178 as cited in: McDowell, Ward, Fagan, Perrons and Ray (2006) "Connecting Time and Space: The Significance of Transformations in Women’s Work in the City". In: International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Vol 30.1 p. 141–158

Women, Children, Home, Time

“I know that many artists feel that they are frauds - that's part of the pleasure of creativity.”

David Cronenberg (1943) Canadian film director, screenwriter and actor

Cronenberg: An intellectual with ominous powers http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/19/arts/19iht-dupont.html (May 19, 2006)

Pleasure, Feeling, Fraud, Parting

“Many creative people have a certain degree of dissatisfaction with the status quo, the established way. If you look at things differently, you are thought of as 'different.' In turn, 'different' people are thought to be 'mad.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Interview with The Boston Globe (1989)

People, Way, Madness

“Art is non-divisive, all inclusive, and universally accessible. It is the primal and sacred heart of the mind, the DNA-deep instinct to express the human soul and to appreciate and delight in the expressions of others. It is the innate Divine Creative Power with which humanity is endowed.”

Lydia Canaan Lebanese singer-songwriter

From Diplomacy and Art http://diplomatartist.com/diplomacy-art/, a contributer article for Diplomat Artist, October 10, 2015

Art, Soul, Universe, Heart

“Children's health depends on the mothers, so if we can scale up the achievement of the MDGs, it would benefit people in Africa. We should also look at how we can empower women to leverage their resources and their creativity and become change agents. We have seen example after example where women who are appropriately motivated and given the right environment can make changes, not only to themselves but also to their families and their communities.”

Margaret Chan (1947) Director-General of the World Health Organization

WHO Interview on taking office as Director-General http://www.who.int/dg/chan/interviews/taking_office/en/, Frontlines, 4 January 2007.

Women, Children, People, Health

“In my opinion, Gustav Mahler's work is one of the most important and interesting products in the history of modern creative arts.”

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) German composer and orchestra director

Gustav Mahler, page 78. Originally written for a volume dedicated to Mahler edited by Paul Stephan, Munich 1910.
Recollections and Reflections

Art, History

“This whole edifice of civilization is in its foundations and in all its stones nothing else than the result of the creative capacity, the achievement, the intelligence, the industry, of individuals: in its greatest triumphs it represents the great crowning achievement of individual God-favored geniuses, in its average accomplishment the achievement of men of average capacity, and in its sum doubtless the result of the use of human labor-force in order to turn to account the creations of genius and of talent. So it is only natural that when the capable intelligences of a nation, which are always in a minority, are regarded only as of the same value as all the rest, then genius, capacity, the value of personality are slowly subjected to the majority and this process is then falsely named the rule of the people. For this is not rule of the people, but in reality the rule of stupidity, of mediocrity, of half-heartedness, of cowardice, of weakness, and of inadequacy”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech to the Industry Club (21 January 1932) as quoted in The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922 – August 1939 (1994) by Norman Hepburn Baynes, Oxford University Press, p.783
1930s

Men, God, People, Stupidity

“If we stop thinking of the poor as victims or as a burden and start recognizing them as resilient and creative entrepreneurs and value-conscious consumers, a whole new world of opportunity can open up.”

C.K. Prahalad book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid

Source: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, 2009, p. 25

World, Thinking

“Islam is one of the world's great religions. Let me be explicit about what I, as a historian of Islam who is not a Muslim, mean by that. Islam has brought comfort and peace of mind to countless millions of men and women. It has given dignity and meaning to drab and impoverished lives. It has taught people of different races to live in brotherhood and people of different creeds to live side by side in reasonable tolerance. It inspired a great civilization in which others besides Muslims lived creative and useful lives and which, by its achievement, enriched the whole world. But Islam, like other religions, has also known periods when it inspired in some of its followers a mood of hatred and violence. It is our misfortune that part, though by no means all or even most, of the Muslim world is now going through such a period, and that much, though again not all, of that hatred is directed against us.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990)

Women, Men, People, World

“To produce 1 lb. of feedlot beef requires 7 lbs. of feed grain, which takes 7,000 lbs. of water to grow. Pass up one hamburger, and you'll save as much water as you save by taking 40 showers with a low-flow nozzle. Yet in the U. S., 70% of all the wheat, corn and other grain produced goes to feeding herds of livestock. Around the world, as more water is diverted to raising pigs and chickens instead of producing crops for direct consumption, millions of wells are going dry. … In the U. S., livestock now produce 130 times as much waste as people do. Just one hog farm in Utah, for example, produces more sewage than the city of Los Angeles. These megafarms are proliferating, and in populous areas their waste is tainting drinking water. In more pristine regions, from Indonesia to the Amazon, tropical rain forest is being burned down to make room for more and more cattle. … We, at least, have the flexibility—the omnivorous stomach and creative brain—to adapt. We can do it by moving down the food chain: eating foods that use less water and land, and that pollute far less, than cows and pigs do. In the long run, we can lose our memory of eating animals, and we will discover the intrinsic satisfactions of a diverse plant-based diet, as millions of people already have.”

Ed Ayres (1941) American magazine editor

"Will We Still Eat Meat?", in Time magazine (8 November 1999), pp. 1 http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,992523-1,00.html- 2 http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,992523-2,00.html.

People, World, Food, Angels

“We believe that the elements in the chemical formula of our creative work, problem, invention, and art, correspond to the challenges of our age.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

quote, p. 378
posthumous publications, El Lissitzky, El Lissitzky : Life, Letters, Texts (1967; 1980)

Age, Art, Problem

“Prokofiev’s creative path traversed many countries and was affected by wars and revolutions. Life brought him into contact with some of the most prominent and influential artistic figures of his time. Observing the magnificent panorama of Prokofiev’s oeuvre, one sees that the composer’s musical style evolved significantly over the course of his creative life. The reasons for the changes of direction have been much discussed and debated.”

Boris Berman (1948) Russian/American musician

Prokofiev’s piano sonatas : a guide for the listener and the performer (2008), Prokofiev: His Life and the Evolution of His Musical Language

Life, War, Music, Change

“It is clear to me that the German nation will achieve new creative energy only by liberating itself from Christianity”

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) German composer and orchestra director

Diary entry, shortly after the death of Gustav Mahler (1911). Quoted in Oxford University Press, Grove music online: Strauss, Richard, §7: Instrumental works (written by Bryan Gilliam and Charles Youmans).
Other sources

“Rivers of creative flow are log jammed w/ heads holding on to incompletions, old business, & avoided decisions.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

26 December 2011 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/151401985902526464 Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

Business, Decision

“Repressive rivals, along with skeptics here at home, misunderstand something important. It is the great advantage of free societies that we creatively adapt to challenges, without the direction of some central authority. Self-correction is the secret strength of freedom. We are a nation with a history of resilience and a genius for renewal. Right now, one of our worst national problems is a deficit of confidence. But the cause of freedom justifies all our faith and effort. It still inspires men and women in the darkest corners of the world, and it will inspire a rising generation. The American spirit does not say, “We shall manage,” or “We shall make the best of it.” It says, “We shall overcome.””

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

And that is exactly what we will do, with the help of God and one another.
2010s, 2017, Speech at "Spirit of Liberty: At Home, In the World" event (2017)

Women, Men, God, Secret

“Responsibility is what awaits outside the Eden of Creativity.”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South african Nobel-winning writer

"The Essential Gesture" (12 October 1984)

“I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term — meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching — there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

"A Personal Credo" (1943), published in American Annual of Photography (1944), reprinted in Nathan Lyons, editor, Photographers on Photography (1966), reprinted in Vicki Goldberg, editor, Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present (1988)

Sense, Effort, Time

“My creativity is over. Now it is only the question of maintenance. I have empowered the girls to look after themselves. To earn their own money, to be somebody. I need to resuscitate.”

Protima Bedi (1948–1998) Indian model and dancer

When she retired from Nityagram, quoted in "I have been a hippie all my life".

Money, Girl, Question

“Artists strive to free this true and spontaneous self in their work. Creativity, meditation are ways of freeing an inner voice”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Revolution From Within

Way

“Let it not be said, wherever there is energy or creative genius, 'She has a masculine mind.'
This by no means argues a willing want of generosity toward Woman. Man is as generous towards her as he knows how to be. Wherever she has herself arisen in national or private history, and nobly shone forth in any form of excellence, men have received her, not only willingly, but with triumph.”

Margaret Fuller book Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

Men, History

“The free, creative, loving people who shine so brightly in my memory of studios and coffee shops have become models for a huge section of the population. If they in turn can just stay alive in the face of power and terror, they may become the decisive section.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

"Introduction"
An Autobiographical Novel (1991)

Love, People, Coffee, Decision

“I have hope because civil society is becoming better informed and more engaged. They are pressing their governments for change — to create democratic societies based on diversity, tolerance and equality. They are proposing creative solutions. They are raising awareness, donating funds, working to transform civic spirit from the local to the global. Working to bring the human family closer together.”

Mohamed ElBaradei (1942) Egyptian law scholar and diplomat, former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Nobel …

Nobel lecture (2005)

Family, Hope, Change

“You don't hear any more of, 'Hey, we did something creative and we turned a profit, how about that?' Everywhere we look, we want to make the most money possible. This is a dangerous, corrupt notion. That's where you see the advent of programming on the radio, and radio research, all these silly things. That has made pop music what it is today. Everything — morals, truth — is all going out the window in favor of profit.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Rolling Stone interview (2002)

Money, Truth, Music

“What do you think of Spinoza? For me he is the ideal example of the cosmic man. He worked as an obscure diamond cutter, disdaining fame and a place at the table of the great. He tells us the importance of understanding our emotions and suggests what causes them. Man will never be free until he is able to direct his emotions to think clearly. Only then can he control his environment and preserve his energy for creative work.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 26

Understanding, Thinking

“Biological systems are dynamical, not easily predicted, and are creative in many ways… In the old equilibrium worldview, ideas about change were dominated by the action-reaction formula. It was a clockwork world, ultimately predictable in boring ways.”

Christopher Langton (1949) American computer scientist

Christopher Langton in: Roger Lewin (1990) Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos New York, Macmillan. p. 190 as cited in: Sohail Inayatullah (1994) " Evolution and Complexity http://www.metafuture.org/Articles/evolution-complexity.htm#_edn1"

World, Way, Idea, Change

“Our purpose is implicit in our name. We're rebelling against life as it is for the masses of people. We believe that man can be a creature of dignity, integrity, and creativity. Filth, starvation, crowded quarters lead to man's degeneration as a biological species, and indeed, will result in his extinction.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Rebellers (1963), p. 66

Life, People

“No doubt is there that the verses of God are verses that shine forth from this Tree, for the Eternal Essence has ever existed in His state of singleness, whereas the verses are a matter for creativity, which is the work of the Primal Will, in whom none can be seen save God alone. Although, in this day men do not look upon the verses of God, yet before long these same verses shall be recited in the most exalted manner and Bayans worth one thousand mithqals of gold shall be written; men shall pride themselves thereon and regard themselves as related to God.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

II, 3
The Persian Bayán

Men, God, Tree

“Our new aim is the organisation of the material environment, i. e. of contemporary industrial production, and all active artistic creativity must be directed towards this.”

Lyubov Popova (1889–1924) Russian artist

Quote, End of 1921, from; Liubov Popova, untitled manuscript, cited by A. Adaskina in 'Liubov' Popova. Put' stanovleniia khudozhnika-konstruktora', 'Tekhnicheskaia estetika', no.11, 1978, p.19; as quoted by Christina Lodder in Tate Papers no. 14: Liubov Popova: From Painting to Textile Design http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/14/liubov-popova-from-painting-to-textile-designhttp://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/14/liubov-popova-from-painting-to-textile-design

“The creative artist has an essential role in modern society. By expressing his individual ideas and emotions he adds to the sum of human awareness.”

Lloyd Goodrich (1897–1987) American art historian

'The Artist in American Society' - Colorado Magazine Vol. 15 No 2 Autumn 1966

Idea

“I have succeeded in structuring my intimate life according to my own standards and I make no secret of my love experiences anymore than does a man. Above all, however, I never let my feelings, the joy or pain of love take the first place in my life inasmuch as creativity, activity, struggle always occupied the foreground.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

Love, Life, Pain, Secret

“A clear horizon — nothing to worry about on your plate, only things that are creative and not destructive and that's withing yourself. Within me I can't bear quarreling, I can't bear feelings between people. I think hatred is wasted energy and it's all non-productive. I'm very sensitive. A sharp word, said by a person who has a temper, if they're close to me, hurts me for days. I know we're only human, we do go in for these various emotions, call them negative emotions but when all these are removed and you can look forward, and the road is clear ahead, and now you're going to create something. I think that's as happy as I would ever want to be.”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

Hitchcock's Definition of Happiness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14dOICbwSIs (YouTube video), excerpt from CBC's interview 'A Talk with Alfred Hitchcock' (1964). Quoted in "Hitchcock's Secret to Happiness" http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/hitchcocks-secret-to-happiness/254769/ by Maria Popova, The Atlantic (20 March 2012).

Happiness, People, Feeling, Thinking

“Pope John Paul II was a seeker of truth, justice and peace. Pope John Paul II was a disciple of religious mysticism, philosophic deliberation and thought and artistic and poetic creativity, By emphasising his experience and teachings, (he) earnestly tried to utilise them in the path of the triumph of truth, justice and peace. It is hoped that the leadership of Catholic Christianity, by following the teachings of the Prophet Jesus, may peace be upon him, by interacting with justice seeking and peace loving political-religious leaders and by also following the ethical and humanitarian thinking of John Paul II, help the world towards a better and more just life.”

Mohammad Khatami (1943) Iranian prominent reformist politician, scholar and shiite faqih.

Reported by AFP on April 3, 2005 in his condoling Message to Vatican
Attributed

Love, Life, Truth, World

“There comes a part where the money and the creative elements all come crashing together. Everybody's under a lot of pressure, and everybody is panicking about what works and what doesn't. And the studios and the money always have one perspective and the creative people have another one, and usually what happens is a lot of compromises get made. I decided not to. I walked off and did Tideland and came back six months later.”

Terry Gilliam (1940) American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe

As quoted in the New York Times article Terry Gilliam's Feel-Good Endings http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/14/movies/14mcgr.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&ref=terrygilliam (14 August 2005)

Money, People, Parting

“I'm one of those people who feels that agriculture is a creative act. It's a very fine art — that's the way I approach it.”

Tommy Lee Jones (1946) American actor and film director

Interview interview (1995)

People, Art, Way, Feeling

“There was always something about Creative Commons and its name that bugged me, too. The name sounds like a variation of the once-powerful Common Cause political-action committee. A ring of days gone by — nostalgia. All I see here is making the very easy and simple U. S. copyright laws more complex for no apparent reason, except maybe as a protest.”

John C. Dvorak (1952) US journalist and radio broadcaster

"Creative Commons Humbug" in PC Magazine (18 July 2005) http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1838249,00.asp 2000s

Law, Nostalgia

“In religions which have lost their creative spark, the gods eventually become no more than poetic motifs or ornaments for decorating human solitude and walls.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek (1946), Ch. 12

God, Religion, Solitude

“Which brings us to a third group of macroeconomists: those who fall into neither the pro- nor the anti-Keynes camp. I count myself among the ambivalent. We credit both sides with making legitimate points, yet we watch with incredulity as the combatants take their enthusiasm or detestation too far. Keynes was a creative thinker and keen observer of economic events, but he left us with more hard questions than compelling answers.”

N. Gregory Mankiw (1958) American economist

N. Gregory Mankiw, "Back In Demand" Wall Street Journal (September 21, 2009).
2000s -

Question

“Our lives are so full of activity and "chatter" it’s difficult to find quiet time… Those are the moments that are the most creative for me. The location is less important than the choice to turn other things off. Because I find that the quietest times of my life speak the loudest.”

Regina E. Dugan (1963) American businesswoman, inventor, and technology developer

As quoted in "The CNN 10 : Thinkers" (2013)

Life, Time

“Cross-culturality differs radically from multiculturality. There is no creative and re-creative sharing of dimensions in multiculturality.”

Wilson Harris (1921–2018) Guyanese writer

Interview with Wilson Harris (2003)

“He had come there dissatisfied with his work, even though his multi-kinetic work was admired and winning him professional recognition. However, at that moment, other ideas were gestating and he wanted to add what he called a "fifth dimension" to his art - that of artificial intelligence. […] : [At the colony, ] he was able to turn his thoughts inward, hoping to discover the new methods and direction that would more deeply satisfy his creative needs. It was at this point, while watching the motions and patterns of sun on leaves in the New Hampshire woods one morning, that Tsai finally achieved the revelatory breakthrough that changed his art and liberated his creative energies. As he put it, he wanted to create "natural movements in dynamic equilibrium, with intelligence," and he found his solution in an unlikely combination of natural phenomenon, the precedent of Gabo's singular (and unrepeated) kinetic sculpture, and the new resource of contemporary analog and digital technology. Speaking of this moment of revelation, Tsai said that he had quite deliberately turned himself into "a sort of plant": facing his chair into the sunshine in the morning, he turned his body in stages throughout the day, mulling over ways of make an "art that presented the observer with natural movements in dynamic equilibrium, and art that could convey the awe I felt while watching sunbeams shimmer through forest leaves." But a work that would "shimmer" simply did not do enough either for the artist or viewer, Tsai concluded. It must also respond in some way to the observer; it would have to work on a new feedback principle and actually engage the observer directly. In short, a cybernetic sculpture was required. To create such radically participatory works, he understood, would require that he draw on his engineering skills rather than suppress them, as he had been trying to do in his period of oil painting.”

Sam Hunter (1923–2014) American art historian

Source: The Cybernetic Sculpture of Tsai Wen-Ying, 1989, p. 67

Hope, Art, Way, Intelligence

“In ceasing to subordinate creative power to any supreme value, modern art has brought home to us the presence of that creative power throughout the whole history of art.”

André Malraux (1901–1976) French novelist, art theorist and politician

Part IV, Chapter VI
Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951)

Art, Home, History

“The renewing companies treat everyone as a source of creative input. What's most interesting is that they cannot be described as either democratically or autocratically managed. Their managers define the boundaries, and their people figure out the best way to do the job within those boundaries. They give up a measure of control in order to gain control over what counts - results”

Robert H. Waterman (1950) American writer

Source: The Renewal Factor, 1987, p. 7

People, Way

“Our view of life must account for how we know life; biological theories must allow for their own discovery and employment. Theories of evolution must provide for the creative acts which brought such theories into existence. Beginning with our own embodiment our theory of knowledge must endorse the ways we manifestly transcend our embodiment by acts of indwelling and extension into more subtle and intangible realms of being, where we meet our ultimate ends.”

Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) Hungarian-British polymath

Transcendence And Self-Transcendence (1970)

Life, Way, Knowledge

“The creative act requires both will and intelligence. Breaking things is easy. You only need a hammer.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 41 (p. 383)

Intelligence

“I have never had the sort of experience the mystics talk about, never felt a revelation of reality through or beyond nature, never felt like Adam in Paradise, never felt, in direct experience, that the world is wholly other than it seems…The nearest I have come to such experiences are glimpses of my own creative powers…and these are moments or intervals of inspiration rather than vision. I’m not sure that I want it unless I can have clarity about other things with it.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", The "Third Book" Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972 (2002), p. 60–1

World, Nature, Reality

“Budgeting is a math exercise, number crunching. Planning is a logical, linear process. Strategizing requires a great deal of information about customers and competitors, along with conceptual skills. Visioning uses a very different part of the brain than budgeting. As the name implies, it involves trying to see possible futures. It inevitably has both a creative and emotional component (e. g., “How do we feel about the options?”). When you use “orthodox planning” to create a vision, frustration and failure are inevitable.”

John P. Kotter (1947) author of The heart of Change

Step 3, p. 68
The Heart of Change, (2002)

Feeling, Exercises, Failure, Future

“The Buddhists maintain that there is no Creator but an infinitude of creative powers, which collectively form the one eternal substance, the essence of which is inscrutable — hence not a subject for speculation for any true philosopher. Socrates invariably refused to argue upon the mystery of universal being, yet no one would ever have thought of charging him with atheism, except those who were bent upon his destruction. Upon inaugurating an active period, says the Secret Doctrine, an expansion of this Divine essence, from within outwardly, occurs in obedience to eternal and immutable law, and the phenomenal or visible universe is the ultimate result of the long chain of cosmical forces thus progressively set in motion. In like manner, when the passive condition is resumed, a contraction of the Divine essence takes place, and the previous work of creation is gradually and progressively undone. The visible universe becomes disintegrated, its material dispersed; and "darkness," solitary and alone, broods once more over the face of the "deep." To use a metaphor which will convey the idea still more clearly, an outbreathing of the "unknown essence" produces the world; and an inhalation causes it to disappear. This process has been going on from all eternity, and our present universe is but one of an infinite series which had no beginning and will have no end.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume II, Chapter VI

Secret, World, Law, Idea

“It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

On John Dryden (1828)

Perfection

“One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

As quoted in Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time‎ (1977) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 448

Solitude

“Well, it wasn’t that I sought out voice acting. I started in the voice world because at puberty I went from a very high voice to drop down to what’s considered “an announcer voice.” And so I said, I’ve got this “announcer voice,” so I’ll go into broadcasting. And so I went to college and majored in radio and TV, and minored in theater. As time went on, I got more interested in the less regimented and more creative world of theater as opposed to broadcasting. I got my degree, but I decided that I wanted to be an actor.”

Rodger Bumpass (1951) American character actor and voice actor

World, Time

“The psyche is awareized energy, in a state of constant creativity; a psychic pattern of multidimensionally expressed; each point within it changing in relationship to all other points, and thus altering the entire pattern or model. Each self is immersed in the psyche, yet immersed in its own individuality simultaneously, experiencing reality in time and out of it at once.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book (1976), p. 166

Reality, Change, Time

“We must never lose sight of the deep and indestructible connections between translation/literature and life. If what we write is to have a chance of living on the page, then we must also live, we must observe life, we must experience and learn to transmute that experience. Translators no less than creative writers.”

John Minford (1946) New Zealand sinologist

Public Lecture (2018)

Life, Literature, Learning, Chance

“Play touches and stimulates vitality, awakening the whole person - mind, body, intelligence and creativity, spontaneity and intuition.”

Viola Spolin (1906–1994) American academic and acting theorist

Theater Games for the Classroom: A Teacher's Handbook (1986) Northwestern University Press, page 3

Intelligence, Personality

“In any creative field--any creative field--you must first understand that you have no value whatsoever. Your work has no value whatsoever. You are completely worthless. Whatever potential you have is just that--potential--and when you are discussing self-publishing a comic book, you have about the same chance of success as 10 thousand others.”

Dave Sim (1956) Canadian cartoonist, creator of Cerebus

Source: Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing (1997), p. 21

Books, Understanding, Chance, Success

“We know only what we do, what we make, what we construct; and all that we make, all that we construct, are realities. I call them images, not in Plato's sense (namely that they are only reflections of reality), but I hold that these images are the reality itself and that there is no reality beyond this reality except when in our creative process we change the images: then we have created new realities.”

Naum Gabo (1890–1977) Russian sculptor

Quote of Naum Gabo, 1950; as cited in: Eidos: a journal of painting, sculpture and design. Nr.1, p. 31
1936 - 1977

Reality, Sense, Change

“As I have said many times, I don’t care if they wipe away every trace of every book I have ever worked on. I just wish they’d stop doing so by pressing the “rewind” button. That’s just creative bankruptcy.”

John Byrne (1950) American author and artist of comic books

2005
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=18193
On taking comics back to the basics; ‘rewinding’ or ‘resetting’ to the status quo

Books, Time

“A presumption of equality may be contrary to present fact, and yet not contrary to a desideratum. We are not as a fact all equally fit to live, equally responsible, or equally deserving of the protection of the law: but it will hardly be doubted that it would be desirable if we were.
But further, the presumption of a desired condition is, in any group of plastic minds, a force tending to bring about the thing presumed, i. e., to create it. It aids a boy to reach maturity to treat him as if he were a little older than he is. A little older: for the presumption loses its effect if it is too wide of the actual fact. The fundamental presumptions of the law are justified on this basis and to this extent: if they are too wide of the truth to be creative, they are not justified.”

William Ernest Hocking (1873–1966) American philosopher

Source: Present Status of the Philosophy of Law and of Rights (1926), Ch. VI : Presumptive Rights, § 24, p. 63.

Truth, Law, Boy

“My reaction to “creative capitalism” as lauded by Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Michael Kinsley, and (somewhat to my surprise), Professor Glaeser of the Harvard Economics Department is a skeptical one. The embrace of massive corporate charity, the criticism of capitalism by its greatest beneficiaries, and the frequent resort by the advocates of “creative capitalism” to platitudes (such as: “the world is getting better, but not fast enough and not for everyone”; “today’s miracles of technology only benefit those who can afford them”; “economic demand is not the same as economic need”), along with the vagueness of the term itself, leave me with an uncomfortable feeling.”

Richard A. Posner (1939) United States federal judge

" Against Creative Capitalism https://web.archive.org/web/20080813084622/http://creativecapitalism.typepad.com:80/creative_capitalism/2008/06/against-creativ.html" (2008), published in Creative Capitalism: A Conversation with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Other Economic Leaders.

World, Feeling

“Friction makes sparks and sparks start creative conflagrations.”

Leo Burnett (1891–1971) American advertising executive

Quote 93
Leo Burnett Worldwide

“It is not inappropriate to describe the function of the teacher as that of acting to compel awareness. This is not to say that such compulsion contrives to bring a subject to act in the way in which the teacher believes the free man ought to act. It aspires only to assure that the subject is acting for himself and not as the mere instrument of unmediated impulses. There is even a compulsory quality about the Socratic method for, by asking questions, by enquiring in the reasons and grounds for doing this or that, it forces a man to conceive of himself in terms of intentions; it thereby forces him to be free.
It does not force him, however, to act in a manner substantively different from this original impulses. … The man who swings at his enemy in blind rage may, after lengthy consideration of creative alternatives, swing at him with cool deliberation. The intentionalist cannot accept the tradition of Kant, Green, and Bosanquet which polarizes conscious duty and preconscious desire and presupposes that reflective awareness will always produce substantive changes in the character of our goals, for to him it is the qualitative change that turns mere impulses into goals that is significant for freedom.”

Benjamin R. Barber (1939–2017) US political scientist

Source: Forced to be Free (1971), p. 78-79

Way, Question, Freedom, Teachers

“The rationalism of the creative minds was tempered by abundant fantasies, and the supreme beauty of the monuments was probably spoiled by the circumambient vanities and ugliness; in a few cases the Greeks came as close to perfection as it was possible to do, yet they were human and imperfect.”

George Sarton (1884–1956) American historian of science

Preface.
A History of Science Vol.1 Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece (1952)

Beauty, Perfection

“In return for the costliness and inconvenience, the squalor and discomfort of our lives, we get to participate in whatever is the latest. We are never left out of anything: we know what's happening, especially since so many of us practice what Paul Valéry called the "delirious professions." As Valéry wrote, "This is the name I give to all those trades whose main tool is one's opinion of oneself, and whose raw material is the opinion others have of you." Although Valéry was writing eighty years ago of Paris, he anticipated the excruciating position of those gay (and straight) New York "creative people" who must be perpetually original in a "population of uniques." The cruel contradiction of such a position is that the creative "live for nothing but to have, and make durable, the illusion of being the only one — for superiority is only a solitude situated at the present limits of a species."”

Edmund White (1940) American novelist and LGBT essayist

The exigencies of the drive to originality can, as Valéry understood, promote a deep uncertainty about one's personal value. If one is a product, is it new enough? Perfect? One of a kind?
New York City (p. 259).
States of Desire: Travels in Gay America (1980)

People, Solitude, Personality, Perfection

“It is usually assumed that, in speaking, in the 1844 Manuscripts, of man’s “being reduced to the level of the animals,” and of man’s alienation from his “species-being” under the conditions of capitalist production, Marx is thinking in terms of an abstract conception of “man” as being alienated from his biological characteristics as a species. So, it is presumed, at this initial stage in the evolution of his thought, Marx believed that man is essentially a creative being whose “natural” propensities are denied by the restrictive character of capitalism. Actually, Marx holds, on the contrary, that the enormous productive power of capitalism generates possibilities for the future development of man which could not have been possible under prior forms of productive system. The organization of social relationships within which capitalist production is carried on in fact leads to the failure to realize these historically generated possibilities. The character of alienated labor does not express a tension between “man in nature” (non-alienated) and “man in society” (alienated), but between the potential generated by a specific form of society—capitalism—and the frustrated realization of that potential. What separates man from the animals is not the mere existence of biological differences between mankind and other species, but the cultural achievements of men, which are the outcome of a very long process of social development.”

Anthony Giddens (1938) British sociologist

Source: Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), pp. 15-16.

Men, Failure, Nature, Thinking

“Has mankind evolved to a point that there exists, or that with creative additions and re-combinations of modest proportions, there can be shown to be available, a common systems methodology, in terms of which we can conceive of, plan, design, construct, and use systems (procedures, machines, teams of people) of any arbitrary type in the service of mankind, and with low rates of failure?”

Arthur D. Hall (1925–2006) American electrical engineer

Source: Metasystems Methodology, (1989), p. 3 Cited in: Derek Hitchins (2007) " Systems Methodology http://www.hitchins.net/The%20Systems%20Approach.pdf"

People, Failure

“If Slumdog Millionaire projects India as a Third World, dirty-underbelly, developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations. It's just that the Slumdog Millionaire idea authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a Westerner, gets creative Golden Globe recognition. The other would perhaps not.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

In his blog, reported in Andrew Buncombe, "Slumdogs who seek success", The Independent (January 16, 2009), News, p. 30.

Pain, World, Idea

“David Galin, among other researchers, has pointed out that teachers have three main tasks: first, to train both hemispheres — not only the verbal, symbolic, logical left hemisphere, which has always been trained in the traditional education, but also the relational, holistic right hemisphere, which is largely neglected in today's schools; second, to train students to use the cognitive style suited to the tasks at hand; and third, to train students to be able to bring both styles — both hemispheres — to bear on a problem in an integrated manner.
When teachers can pair the complementary modes or fit one mode to the appropriate task, teaching and learning will become a much more precise process. Ultimately, the goal will be to develop both halves of the brain. Both modes are necessary for full human functioning and both are necessary for creative work of all kinds, whether writing or painting, developing a new theory in physics, or dealing with environmental problems.”

Betty Edwards (1926) American artist

Source: The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (1979), p.196

Education, School, Problem, Learning

“Time expands in all directions, and away from any given point. The past is never finished, and the future is never completely formed. You choose to experience certain versions of events. You then organize these, nibbling at them, so to speak, a bit "at a time." The creativity of any given entity is endless, and yet all of the potentials for experience will be explored… You follow in terms of continuity one version of yourself at any given "time"… Quite literally, you live more than one life at a time. You do not experience your century simply from one separate vantage point, and the individuals alive in any given century have far deeper connections that you realize. You do not experience your space-time world, then, from one but from many viewpoints.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The “Unknown” Reality: Volume Two, (1979), p. 462-463

Life, World, Time, Past

“He had a conspicuous individual talent, but it was interpretive, not directly creative. He could never have emulated Chaplin, Keaton or Jacques Tati and set up a whole project by himself, controlling its every detail even if the task took years. But there is no point carping. He had such a protean capacity that it would have been a miracle if he had been in full command of it.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Ibid.
Memoirs, North Face of Soho (2006)

“There is but one God. True is His Name, creative His personality and immortal His form. He is without fear sans enmity, unborn and self-illumined. By the Guru's grace He is obtained.”

Nanak (1469–1539) Founder of Sikhism

Guru Nanak quotes

God, Fear, Personality

“I have met a lot and they’ve been varied. The experiences are extremely varied. Some emotional and with great depth and other ones just genuine gratitude, you know, and thanks. It’s all very humbling to me and I take it very seriously and I feel it quite to my core so but as I said they’re very different and they all combine that overall same feeling of we’re all connected on way or another, you know. The fan base is responsible for my reprisal and that’s something that I just cherish. There’s a connection because it’s something that I artistically … I look at this as an actor and I have to use the word artistic because it’s a creative process. It sounds a little fishy but still, they reacted to my creative concept and we’re bonded because of it. It was one of those wonderful things in life. You click and I certainly feel that with people that feel an affection for Prime.”

Peter Cullen

Exclusive Interview with Peter Cullen http://collider.com/exclusive-interview-with-peter-cullen/ (June 9, 2007)

Life, People, Way, Feeling

“A great new edifice is not built overnight. It was 11 years from the Declaration of Independence to the writing of the Constitution. The construction of workable federal institutions required still another generation. The greatest works of our Nation's founders lay not in documents and in declarations, but in creative, determined action. The building of the new house of Europe has followed the same practical, purposeful course. Building the Atlantic partnership now will not be easily or cheaply finished.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, Address at Independence Hall

Housing, Partnership

“This view does not deny that matter also has causal potency — it does not deny that there is causal power from elementary particles upward, so there is upward causation — but in addition it insists that there is also downward causation. It shows up in our creativity and acts of free will, or when we make moral decisions. In those occasions we are actually witnessing downward causation by consciousness.”

Amit Goswami (1936) American physicist

"Scientific Proof of the Existence of God : An interview with Amit Goswami" by Craig Hamilton in What Is Elightenment? magazine http://www.wie.org/j11/goswami.asp (Spring-Summer 1997). Context: The current worldview has it that everything is made of matter, and everything can be reduced to the elementary particles of matter, the basic constituents — building blocks — of matter. And cause arises from the interactions of these basic building blocks or elementary particles; elementary particles make atoms, atoms make molecules, molecules make cells, and cells make brain. But all the way, the ultimate cause is always the interactions between the elementary particles. This is the belief — all cause moves from the elementary particles. This is what we call "upward causation." So in this view, what human beings — you and I think of as our free will does not really exist. It is only an epiphenomenon or secondary phenomenon, secondary to the causal power of matter. And any causal power that we seem to be able to exert on matter is just an illusion. This is the current paradigm.Now, the opposite view is that everything starts with consciousness. That is, consciousness is the ground of all being. In this view, consciousness imposes "downward causation." In other words, our free will is real. When we act in the world we really are acting with causal power. This view does not deny that matter also has causal potency — it does not deny that there is causal power from elementary particles upward, so there is upward causation — but in addition it insists that there is also downward causation. It shows up in our creativity and acts of free will, or when we make moral decisions. In those occasions we are actually witnessing downward causation by consciousness.

Decision

“The reason, the creativeness, and the courage that human beings possess foster an abiding faith that what humanity creates, humanity can and will control.”

Bernard Lown (1921–2021) American cardiologist developer of the DC defibrillator and the cardioverter, as well as a recipient of the…

A Prescription for Hope (1985)
Context: If we are to succeed, this vision must possess millions of people. We must convince each generation that they are but transient passengers on this planet earth. It does not belong to them. They are not free to doom generations yet unborn. They are not at liberty to erase humanity's past nor dim its future. Only life itself can lay claim to sacred continuity. The magnitude of the danger and its imminence must bring the human family together in common pursuit of peace denied throughout the century. On the threshold of a new millennium the achievement of world peace is no longer remote, for it is beckoned by the unleashing of the deepest spiritual forces embedded in humankind when threatened with extinction. The reason, the creativeness, and the courage that human beings possess foster an abiding faith that what humanity creates, humanity can and will control.

Faith, Courage

“In all living nature (and perhaps also in that which we consider as dead) love is the motive force which drives the creative activity in the most diverse directions.”

P. D. Ouspensky book Tertium Organum

Tertium Organum (1922)
Context: Generally speaking, the significance of the indirect results may very often be of more importance than the significance of direct ones. And since we are able to trace how the energy of love transforms itself into instincts, ideas, creative forces on different planes of life; into symbols of art, song, music, poetry; so can we easily imagine how the same energy may transform itself into a higher order of intuition, into a higher consciousness which will reveal to us a marvelous and mysterious world.
In all living nature (and perhaps also in that which we consider as dead) love is the motive force which drives the creative activity in the most diverse directions.

Love, Motivation, Nature, Dead

“They worked until the building was completed — master builders, artists, labourers, clowns, noblemen, priests, burghers. But they all remained anonymous, and no one knows to this day who built the cathedral of Chartres.
Regardless of my own beliefs and my own doubts, which are unimportant in this connection, it is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman (1960).
Context: People ask what are my intentions with my films — my aims. It is a difficult and dangerous question, and I usually give an evasive answer: I try to tell the truth about the human condition, the truth as I see it. This answer seems to satisfy everyone, but it is not quite correct. I prefer to describe what I would like my aim to be. There is an old story of how the cathedral of Chartres was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Then thousands of people came from all points of the compass, like a giant procession of ants, and together they began to rebuild the cathedral on its old site. They worked until the building was completed — master builders, artists, labourers, clowns, noblemen, priests, burghers. But they all remained anonymous, and no one knows to this day who built the cathedral of Chartres.
Regardless of my own beliefs and my own doubts, which are unimportant in this connection, it is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God. He lived and died without being more or less important than other artisans; 'eternal values,' 'immortality' and 'masterpiece' were terms not applicable in his case. The ability to create was a gift. In such a world flourished invulnerable assurance and natural humility. Today the individual has become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic creation.
The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy. Thus we finally gather in one large pen, where we stand and bleat about our loneliness without listening to each other and without realizing that we are smothering each other to death. The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny the existence of each other.
We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's whim and the purest ideal. Thus if I am asked what I would like the general purpose of my films to be, I would reply that I want to be one of the artists in the cathedral on the great plain. I want to make a dragon's head, an angel, a devil — or perhaps a saint — out of stone. It does not matter which; it is the sense of satisfaction that counts.
Regardless of whether I believe or not, whether I am a Christian or not, I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral.

Life, God, Art

Quotes about creativity page 12

Quotes about creativity
page 12