Quotes about creativity
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“Living creatively is really important to maintain throughout your life. And living creatively doesn't mean only artistic creativity, although that's part of it. It means being yourself, not just complying with the wishes of other people.”

Matt Groening (1954) American cartoonist

Life, People, Parting

“Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts.”

Rita Mae Brown (1944) Novelist, poet, screenwriter, activist

Variant: Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.

“One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Variant: There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Reading

“A creative mess is better than idle tidiness.”

Michael J. Fox (1961) Canadian-American actor

“So that is the design process or the creative process. Start with a problem, forget the problem, the problem reveals itself or the solution reveals itself and then you reevaulate it. This is what you are doing all the time.”

Paul Rand (1914–1996) American graphic designer

Problem, Time, Forgetting

“As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation -- either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Way, Suffering

“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 2 : Transformed nonconformist

“Creative work is more accurately a machine that digs down and finds stuff, emotional stuff that will someday be raw material that can be used to produce more stuff, stuff like itself - clay to be available for future use.”

David Byrne (1952) Scottish alternative rock musician and promoter of world music

Source: Bicycle Diaries

Future

“A woman is human.

She is not better, wiser, stronger, more intelligent, more creative, or more responsible than a man.

Likewise, she is never less.

Equality is a given.

A woman is human.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Intelligence

“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. … I cannot tell if I would have done any creative work of importance in music, but I do know that I get most joy in life out of my violin.”

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

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Life, Music, Thinking, Joy

“Once I opened my mind to the concept of a greater power, I never struggled with it. Everywhere I went, I felt and saw the existence of a creative intelligence in this universe, of a loving power larger than myself in nature, in people, everywhere.”

Anthony Kiedis book Scar Tissue

Source: Scar Tissue

Love, People, Intelligence, Nature

“The truth is that creative activity is one that involves the entire self - our emotions, our levels of energy, our characters, and our minds.”

Robert Greene book Mastery

Source: Mastery

Truth

“People who know how to creatively break the rules also know why the rules were there in the first place.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

People

“Maya Angelou observed you cant use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. Sadly, too often creativity is smothered rather than nurtured. There has to be climate in which new ways of thinking, perceiving, questioning are encouraged.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Source: How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life

Angels, Way, Question, Thinking

“Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

Time

“A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.”

Nelson Algren book Nonconformity

Source: Nonconformity (1953/1996)
Context: You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich. Compassion is all to the good, but vindictiveness is the verity Faulkner forgot: the organic force in every creative effort, from the poetry of Villon to the Brinks Express Robbery, that gives shape and color to all our dreams. [... ] A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery. The strong-armer isn't out merely to turn a fast buck any more than the poet is out solely to see his name on the cover of a book, whatever satisfaction that event may afford him. What both need most deeply is to get even. And, of course, neither will.

Sense

“Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict -- alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Peace

“Supposedly there's an actual, researched link between extreme creativity and mental illness, and I believe it because I've seen it with my own eyes.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: Wild Roses

“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”

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

Art, Knowledge, Teachers, Joy

“We stigmatize mistakes. And we're now running national educational systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make -- and the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities.”

Ken Robinson (1950) UK writer

People, Education

“Almost always the creative, dedicated minority has made the world better.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

World

“When the creative impulse sweeps over you, grab it. You grab it and honor it and use it, because momentum is a rare gift.”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Source: North of Beautiful

“In a time of social fragmentation, vulgarity becomes a way of life. To be shocking becomes more important - and often more profitable - than to be civil or creative or truly original.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Life, Way, Time

“We must recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other without always understanding what will be created.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Understanding, Parting

“I can always be distracted by love, but eventually I get horny for my creativity.”

Gilda Radner (1946–1989) American comedian

Love

“Cooking requires confident guesswork and improvisation-- experimentation and substitution, dealing with failure and uncertainty in a creative way”

Paul Theroux (1941) American travel writer and novelist

Source: Sir Vidia's Shadow: A Friendship Across Five Continents

Way, Confidence, Failure, Cooking

“The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to a new creative movement. Awe is what moves us forward.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

“Transcend your abuse and transform it into a source of courage, creativity and compassion.”

Adeline Yen Mah (1937) Author and physician

Source: Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter

Courage

“That's the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.”

Ray Bradbury book Zen in the Art of Writing

Source: Zen in the Art of Writing

Secret, Cats, Idea

“I've always felt that the best whips and chains are in the mind. With a little creativity, the physical ones are hardly necessary.”

Jim Butcher book Blood Rites

Source: Blood Rites

“Creativity could be described as letting go of certainties.”

Gail Sheehy (1937) writer, biographer

“Mr. Freeman sighs. "No imagination. What are you thirteen? Fourteen? You've already let them beat your creativity out of you!”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Imagination

“Creative scientists and saints expect revelation and do not fear it. Neither do children. But as we grow up and we are hurt, we learned not to trust.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Children, Fear, Learning, Hurt

“It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Science

“Routine kills creative thought.”

Scarlett Thomas book PopCo

Source: PopCo

“When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.”

Cynthia Heimel (1947–2018) American writer

"Lower Manhattan Survival Tactics" in The Village Voice (1983)

Fools, Hell

“An adult life… is a slowly emerging design, with shifting components, occasional dramatic disruptions, and fresh creative arrangements.”

Jill Ker Conway (1934–2018) American historian

Life

“Some split between the inner world and outer world is common to all behaviour, and the need to bridge the gap is the source of creative behaviour.”

Anthony Storr (1920–2001) English psychiatrist

World

“You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.
What mood is that?
Last-minute panic.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Mood

“Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information; it is a creative human activity.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

Science

“It was the kind of place you went when your earthly troubles became too much for you and you were looking for a creative way to commit suicide.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

Way, Suicide

“You're always believing ahead of your evidence. What was the evidence I could write a poem? I just believed it. The most creative thing in us is to believe in a thing.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

“Creativity is the defeat of habit by originality.”

Arthur Koestler (1905–1983) Hungarian-British author and journalist

“creative entitlement simply means believing that you are allowed to be here, and that—merely by being here—you are allowed to have a voice and a vision of your own.”

Elizabeth Gilbert Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Source: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Context: But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal..." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime — the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Love, Truth, World, Christ

“Nothing will stop you being creative more effectively as the fear of making a
mistake.”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

Fear

“Sadness is the matrix from which wit and irony spring; sadness is uncomfortable and creative, which is why consumer society cannot tolerate it.”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

Sadness, Spring

“Your unique creative talents and abilities are flowing through you and are being expressed in deeply satisfying ways. Your creativity is always in demand.”

Louise L. Hay (1926–2017) American writer

Way

“And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see - or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

Hope, Flowers, Reading

“I get a kick out of being an outsider constantly. It allows me to be creative. I don't like anything in the mainstream and they don't like me.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

“A society's competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic tables, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity.”

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

School, Imagination

“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 (1933–2019) German fashion designer

Secret

“Because you’re a creation of God, you reflect the Divine qualities of creativity, wisdom, and love.”

Doreen Virtue (1958) American writer

Love, Wisdom, God

“But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 1 : A tough mind and a tender heart
Context: The strong man holds in a living blend strongly marked opposites. The idealists are usually not realistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic. The militant are not generally known to be passive, nor the passive to be militant. Seldom are the humble self-assertive, or the self-assertive humble. But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony. The philosopher Hegel said that truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in the emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.

Life

“This is precisely what is decisive in Nietzsche’s conception of art, that he sees it in its essential entirety in terms of the artist; this he does consciously and in explicit opposition to that conception of art which represents it in terms of those who “enjoy” and “experience” it.
That is a guiding principle of Nietzsche’s teaching on art: art must be grasped in terms of creators and producers, not recipients. Nietzsche expresses it unequivocally in the following words (WM, 811): “Our aesthetics heretofore has been a woman’s aesthetics, inasmuch as only the recipients of art have formulated their experiences of ‘what is beautiful.’ In all philosophy to date the artist is missing.” Philosophy of art means “aesthetics” for Nietzsche too—but masculine aesthetics, not feminine aesthetics. The question of art is the question of the artist as the productive, creative one; his experiences of what is beautiful must provide the standard.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Source: Nietzsche (1961), p. 70

Beauty, Art, Question, Decision

“Hinduism is like a great reservoir of water from which many streams take their rise and to which they again repair after passing through many strange and fair lands. It is a great, creative matrix giving birth to many beautiful and living forms. Itself a historical, it has given birth to many sects and branches with interesting, chequered histories. Paying sole allegiance to the Guide within seated in the cave of the heart, it has put forward from time to time many teachers and sages of incomparable power and vision, incarnating the very Gods above and within.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

On Hinduism (2000)

God, Beauty, History, Birth

“I see, indeed I know, that in some sense God is love, and God is wisdom, and God is creative action, yes and God is beauty; but what God actually is, whether the maker of all things, or the fragrance of all things, or just a dream in our own hearts, I have not the art to know. Neither have you, I believe; nor any man, nor any spirit of our humble stature.”

Olaf Stapledon book Sirius

Sirius (1944)

Love, Wisdom, God, Beauty

“Technology is dad-at-home friendly. It allows the family to be more creative and role flexible than it ever has in the past without being poor in the process.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 239.

Family, Home, Past

“The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

1970 and later
Source: Eric Maisel, ‎Ann Maisel (2010) Brainstorm: Harnessing the Power of Productive Obsessions. p. 95

Change

“The impulse to think, to philosophize and spin beauty and brilliance out of mind and soul, is somehow the offspring of resistance — of an effort to overcome an apparently insurmountable obstacle. Hence cultural creativeness is more likely to flourish in an atmosphere of restriction, of an imposed pattern of thought and behavior, than in one of total freedom.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

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

Beauty, Behavior, Soul, Thinking

“From infinite probable acts, comma, only one can be physically experienced as a rule, period. The dream world operates as a creative situation in which probable acts are instantly materialized, laid out in actual or symbolic form. From these you then choose the most appropriate for physical expression.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 669, p. 387
The Nature of Personal Reality (1974)

World, Dreams

“"Everyone is bisexual’: “I’ve always had as many powerful, creative ladies in my life as I have men, and you could probably describe some of those relationships as romantic. I think everyone’s bisexual to some degree or another; it’s just a question of whether or not you choose to recognise it and embrace it. Personally, I think choosing between men and women is like choosing between cake and ice cream. You’d be daft not to try both when there are so many different flavours.””

Björk (1965) Icelandic singer-songwriter

Diva magazine, October 2004
Other quotes

Life, Women, Men, Question

“The school of art which Hulme started and Pound established.. diction, rhythm and metre were fully emancipated from formal artifice and the poet was free to act creatively under the laws of his own origination.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

Form in Modern Poetry(1932)

School, Law, Art

“Socialists have all too often failed to take ecological issues seriously enough. However, this is not a fault of socialists alone, as the fault applies even more to the liberal tradition taken as a whole. But whatever we choose to say about socialism in the twentieth century, it has to be emphasized that no one can be truly socialist and indeed Marxist in the twenty-first century and fail to acknowledge the full severity of the planetary ecological crisis. We are either at the forefront of the struggle to protect the earth as a place of human habitation (and as a home for innumerable species) or we are on the side of the system’s creative exterminism of the Earth system as we know it.”

John Bellamy Foster (1953) Sociology professor and Marxist writer

Interview with Left Voice (2017)

Home

“Each identity has free will and chooses its environment as a physical stance in space and time. Those involved in a given century are working on particular problems and challenges. Various races do not simply 'happen,' and diverse cultures do not just appear. The greater self 'divides' itself, manifesting in flesh as several individuals, with entirely different backgrounds, yet each embarked on the same kind of creative challenge.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book (1976), p. 136

Problem, Appearance, Time

“You might say that a creative person is a person who simply has a desire to have something, to add something to the world that's not there yet, and goes about arranging fort that to happen.... when you desire a work of art and make it, you've added to the stock of art in the world. Artists are one of the people who can do that: add to the stock of things.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 15

People, World, Art, Personality

“I must confess that my estimate of Lovecraft would not have pleased his most ardent admirers. The view I expressed in that book was that, while Lovecraft was distinctly a creative genius in his own way, his pessimism should not be taken too seriously; that it was the pessimism of a sick recluse, and had about it an element of rassentiment, a kind of desire to take revenge on the world that rejected him. In short, Lovecraft was a 19th century romantic, born in the wrong time. Most men of genius dislike their own age, but the really great ones impose their own vision on the age. The weak ones turn away into a world of gloomy fantasy.”

Colin Wilson book The Mind Parasites

Source: The Mind Parasites (1967), p. 2

Men, Books, Age, World

“The same society which receives the rewards of technology must, as a cooperating whole, take responsibility for control. To deal with these new problems will require a new conservation. We must not only protect the countryside and save it from destruction, we must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities. Our conservation must be not just the classic conservation of protection and development, but a creative conservation of restoration and innovation. Its concern is not with nature alone, but with the total relation between man and the world around him. Its object is not just man's welfare, but the dignity of man's spirit.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

Message to Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty written to Congress (8 Feb 1965), in Lyndon B. Johnson: Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President (1965), Vol.1, 156. United States. President (1963-1969 : Johnson), Lyndon Baines Johnson, United States. Office of the Federal Register — 1970
1960s

World, Beauty, Nature, Problem

“Creativity is a hidden gem. Education is needed to uncover it.”

Ataol Behramoğlu (1942) Turkish writer

The Poet's Poetic Responsibility (2012)

Education

“The free creativeness of mind is possible because, […] the world ultimately exists, not of material stuff, but of patterns, of organization, the evolution of which involves no absolute creation of an alien world of material from nothing. The purely structural character of reality thus helps to render possible and intelligible the free creativeness of life and mind, … The energy which is being dissipated by the decay of physical structure is being partly taken up and organized into life structures … Life and mind thus appear as products of the cosmic decline, … Our origin is thus accidental, our position is exceptional and our fate is sealed, with the inevitable running down of the solar system. Life and mind, […] are thus reduced to a very casual and inferior status in the cosmic order […] – a transient and embarrassed phantom in an alien, if not hostile universe. […] The human spirit is not a pathetic, wandering phantom of the universe, […] but meets with spiritual hospitality and response everywhere. Our deepest thoughts and emotions are but responses to stimuli which come to us not from an alien, but from an essentially friendly and kindred universe.”

Jan Smuts (1870–1950) military leader, politician and statesman from South Africa

Smuts expounding a confrontation of opposites in his presidential address to the British Association in September 1931, as cited by W. K. Hancock in SMUTS 2: The Fields of Force 1919-1950, p. 232-234

Life, Hostility, Fate, World

“Each jazz musician when he takes a horn in his hand — trumpet, bass, saxophone, drums — whatever instrument he plays — each soloist, that is, when he begins to ad lib on a given composition with a title and improvise a new creative melody, this man is taking the place of a composer.”

Charles Mingus (1922–1979) American jazz double bassist, composer and bandleader

What Is A Jazz Composer? (1971)

““The depth of creativity of the author (Mani Madhava Chakyar) is evident from the introductory Shlokas (hymns in Sanskrit) itself ”
- Dr. Prem Lata Sharma (noted Hindi writer and scholar of Indian arts and literature)”

Mani Madhava Chakyar book Nātyakalpadrumam

Nātyakalpadrumam

Art, Literature

“However extensively Lenin was prepared to creatively develop the Marxism he inherited, he was not prepared to ‘skip stages’ in achieving socialism. Socialism required, as prerequisite, the modernization and industrial development of its economic base. To create the missing material prerequisites, Lenin was prepared to fall back on a centrally supervised market-influenced program of state capitalism.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: Marxism, Fascism & Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism, (2008), p. 56

“As translators, we must be courageous, free and passionate about what we are doing. We must constantly strive to enrich our own cultural and linguistic repertoire. We must read, we must write. We must be prepared to rethink, to revise, to rewrite, constantly. We must have endless time and patience. Deadlines are there to be ignored, to be kept alive. Above all we must play with words, ideas and feelings. Delight in them. We must never lose sight of the playfulness and creative licence that are the lifeblood of art and literature, and hence of translation.”

John Minford (1946) New Zealand sinologist

Public Lecture (2018)

Art, Feeling, Literature, Idea

“The difference in sex does not hinder the ability of being strong on the levels of thinking, giving, having a strong willpower and the ability to take the right decision and the right position after studying all options, once the circumstances that favor creativity and rational thinking are available.”

Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah (1935–2010) Lebanese faqih

The Woman's Personality and Role in Life http://english.bayynat.org.lb/WomenFamily/role.htm.

Sex, Thinking, Decision, Study

“While mental disturbances may provide individuals with an underlying sense of unease that seems necessary for sustained creative activity, these disturbances are not the only source for inner tension… chronic physical ailments may give someone a heightened sense of urgency to leave a mark on the world and achieve immortality through creative greatness.”

Arnold M. Ludwig

The Price of Greatness: Resolving the Creativity and Madness Controversy (1995)

World, Sense

“In so far as we are individuals, each of us is a fragment of a species, a part of this universe, a single dot in the immense network of forces and influences, cosmic, ethnic, historic, whose laws we obey. We are subject to the determination of the physical world. But each man is also a person, he is not subject to the stars and atoms; for he subsists entirely with the very subsistence of his spiritual soul, and the latter is in him a principle of creative unity, of independence and of freedom.”

Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) French philosopher

Scholasticism and Politics (1940)

World, Law, Soul, Star

“I do not want to avoid immersing myself in trouble — to be a mess — to struggle out of it. I want to invent, to discover, to imagine, to speculate, to improvise — to seize the hazardous in order to be inspired. I want to experience the manifestation of the absolute — the manifestation of the unexpected in an extreme and unique relation. I know that only by following my creative instincts in an act of creative destruction will I be able to find it.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

Statement of April 1950, as quoted in Hans Hofmann (1998), ed. Helmut Friedel and Tina Dickey
1950s

Imagination

“We Conservatives…are realists. We know that the British are one of the most creative and gifted peoples on earth. But we also know that the British are individualists, who do not respond to state direction and control. We like leadership—yes. But, above all, we like freedom.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Article for the News of the World (29 April 1979) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104052 <br class="br">Leader of the Opposition

People, Freedom

“Happy birthday to my unorthodox/free spirited mother @Courtney thanks for teaching me to embrace creativity&survive”

Frances Bean Cobain (1992) American artist

9 July 2014 https://twitter.com/alka_seltzer666/status/486990347159891968 <br class="br"> Twitter https://twitter.com/alka_seltzer666 posts

Happiness, Birthday

“He had assumed that if you removed a human being’s natural incentive to work—his initiative, his spontaneous creative energy—and replaced it with external motivation and coercion, he would become a lazy and careless worker. But no careless workers kept those lovely farmlands, or made the superb cars and comfortable trains. The lure and compulsion of profit was evidently a much more effective replacement of the natural initiative than he had been led to believe.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 3 (p. 82)

Love, Cars, Motivation, Nature

“[My] approach recognizes the basic principle of a written Constitution. We "the people" adopted a written Constitution precisely because it has a fixed meaning, a meaning that does not change. Otherwise we would have adopted the British approach of an unwritten, evolving constitution. Aside from amendment according to Article V, the Constitution’s meaning cannot be updated, or changed, or altered by the Supreme Court, the Congress, or the President. Of course, even when strictly interpreted as I believe it should be, the Constitution remains a modern, "breathing" document as some like to call it, in the sense that the Court is constantly required to interpret how its provisions apply to the Constitutional questions of modern life. Nevertheless, strict interpretation must never surrender to the understandably attractive impulse towards creative but unwarranted alterations of first principles.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Speech to the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 2 February 2001.
2000s

Life, People, Understanding, Question

“When art is a form of behaviour, software predominates over hardware in the creative sphere. Process replaces product in importance, just as system supersedes structure.”

Roy Ascott (1934) British academic

Behaviourables and Futuribles, manifesto, 1967; as cited in: Edward A. Shanken. " Cybernetics and Art: Cultural Convergence in the 1960s http://www.responsivelandscapes.com/readings/CyberneticsArtCultConv.pdf." 2002

Art

“PROUN is understood as the creative construction of form (based on the mastery of space) assisted by economic construction of the applied material. The goal of PROUN is progressive movement on the way to concrete creation, and not the substantiation, explanation, or promotion of life.”

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

1915 - 1925, Theses on the 'PROUN': from painting to architecture' (1920)

Life, Way

“I'm always working on the same thing, the creation of an identity. It's mysterious: We think identity is genetically given, but I believe there is creative will involved with the decision of who we are going to be. All my movies are concerned with this.”

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)

Thinking, Decision

“The only things I had to look forward to in life was a job and a career and a family and just going through the whole cycle. It just seemed like what everybody else was doing. And I looked at people around me. I looked at the people that taught the schools and around the government, and I looked at the type of work that my father did, and none of it really interested me that much. And when I first took psychedelics, I felt like I was admitted into a world of compassion and beauty and creativity. It was like nothing I had experienced in my regular life. And almost instantly that became the goal of where I wanted to be…”

D.M. Turner (1962–1996) American drug researcher

Interview with Elizabeth Gips http://www.tripzine.com/articles.asp?id=dmturnergips

Life, People, World, School

“Sexual exhibitionism—homosexual or heterosexual—is anathema. The heroic and creative inner struggle of an older generation of Gay Greats, exemplified by the late Nobel Prize-winning novelist Patrick White, was in the Greek tradition: silent and stoic, principled yet private.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“'AYN RAND, HOMOSEXUALITY, AND HUMAN LIBERATION,'” http://www.wnd.com/2004/07/25485/ WorldNetDaily.com, July 9, 2004 <br class="br">2000s

“Being an athlete, you have to consider whether your meals have enough of everything you need. As a vegetarian, you are forced to be creative, which I find makes me more adventurous with my cooking. Following a strict diet based on performance can be tedious, but because I enjoy the variety of my diet, it makes it easier to follow. … If any cyclists are thinking of becoming vegetarian, then I would suggest giving it a go. There’s definitely no harm in trying it! Be prepared to be experimental and open to new foods – you can’t just take out meat from your existing meals, you need to learn new ways of eating.”

Lizzie Deignan (1988) English track and road racing cyclist

"The Fuelling of a Champion: Lizzie Deignan" https://www.cycleplan.co.uk/blog/the-fuelling-of-a-champion-nutrition-of-pro-cyclist-lizzie-deignan, interview with The Cycleplan Blog (9 March 2018).

Food, Way, Thinking, Learning

“Use art, be creative. No more war. No more children dying. A pawn that does not move in chess upsets the game. I know there is love in the world still and that is what I wish to surround myself with. Sacrifice your time and energy into something positive instead of the negative and you will see that change around you.”

Lorin Morgan-Richards (1975) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

Speaking at the Get Shamrocked Irish Festival (19 September 2014).

Love, War, Children, World

“The objective of the Computer-Aided Design Project is to evolve a machine systems which will permit the human designer and the computer to work together on creative design problems.”

Douglas T. Ross (1929–2007) American computer scientist

Source: Computer-Aided Design: A Statement of Objectives (1960), p. iii: Abstract.

Problem

“This “sublime revenge” of ressentiment (in Nietzsche's words) has indeed played a creative role in the history of value systems. It is “sublime,” for the impulses of revenge against those who are strong, healthy, rich, or handsome now disappear entirely. Ressentiment has brought deliverance from the inner torment of these affects. Once the sense of values has shifted and the new judgments have spread, such people cease to be enviable, hateful, and worthy of revenge. They are unfortunate and to be pitied, for they are beset with “evils.” Their sight now awakens feelings of gentleness, pity, and commiseration. When the reversal of values comes to dominate accepted morality and is invested with the power of the ruling ethos, it is transmitted by tradition, suggestion, and education to those who are endowed with the seemingly devaluated qualities. They are struck with a “bad conscience” and secretly condemn themselves. The “slaves,” as Nietzsche says, infect the “masters.” Ressentiment man, on the other hand, now feels “good,” “pure,” and “human”—at least in the conscious layers of his mind. He is delivered from hatred, from the tormenting desire of an impossible revenge, though deep down his poisoned sense of life and the true values may still shine through the illusory ones. There is no more calumny, no more defamation of particular persons or things. The systematic perversion and reinterpretation of the values themselves is much more effective than the “slandering” of persons or the falsification of the world view could ever be."”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Variant: The man of ressentiment cannot justify or even understand his own existence and sense of life in terms of positive values such as power, health, beauty, freedom, and independence. Weakness, fear, anxiety, and a slavish disposition prevent him from obtaining them. Therefore he comes to feel that “all this is vain anyway” and that salvation lies in the opposite phenomena: poverty, suffering, illness, and death. This “sublime revenge” of ressentiment (in Nietzsche’s words) has indeed played a creative role in the history of value systems. It is “sublime,” for the impulses of revenge against those who are strong, healthy, rich, or handsome now disappear entirely. Ressentiment has brought deliverance from the inner torment of these affects. Once the sense of values has shifted and the new judgments have spread, such people cease to been viable, hateful, and worthy of revenge. They are unfortunate and to be pitied, for they are beset with “evils.” Their sight now awakens feelings of gentleness, pity, and commiseration. When the reversal of values comes to dominate accepted morality and is invested with the power of the ruling ethos, it is transmitted by tradition, suggestion, and education to those who are endowed with the seemingly devaluated qualities. They are struck with a “bad conscience” and secretly condemn themselves. The “slaves,” as Nietzsche says, infect the “masters.” Ressentiment man, on the other hand, now feels “good,” “pure,” and “human”—at least in the conscious layers of his mind. He is delivered from hatred, from the tormenting desire of an impossible revenge, though deep down his poisoned sense of life and the true values may still shine through the illusory ones. There is no more calumny, no more defamation of particular persons or things. The systematic perversion and reinterpretation of the values themselves is much more effective than the “slandering” of persons or the falsification of the world view could ever be.
Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 76-77

Life, Hate, People, World

“The chief enemy of creativity at work is not time; it is fear.”

Paul Sloane (1950) British author and puzzle designer

Fear, Time

“Creativity is an integral part of our personality.”

Jerzy Vetulani (1936–2017) Polish scientist

Vetulani, Jerzy (6 December 2009): W każdym z nas tkwi mr Hyde https://nto.pl/profesor-jerzy-vetulani-w-kazdym-z-nas-tkwi-mr-hyde/ar/4135849, interview. Nowa Trybuna Opolska (in Polish).

Parting, Personality

“For physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body; it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity. The relationship between the soundness of the body and the activities of the mind is subtle and complex. Much is not yet understood. But we do know what the Greeks knew: that intelligence and skill can only function at the peak of their capacity when the body is healthy and strong; that hardy spirits and tough minds usually inhabit sound bodies.”

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

1960, Sport at the New Frontier: The Soft American

Intelligence, Strong

“My solution to the problem of unleashing creativity is always to set up a target. The best example of this was the Apollo project in the United States.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

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

Problem

“Vipassana meditation is an ongoing creative purification process. Observation of the moment-to-moment experience cleanses the mental layers, one after another.”

Amit Ray (1960) Indian author

Yoga and Vipassana: An Integrated Lifestyle (2012) https://books.google.co.in/books?id=sBsG9V1oVdMC,

“.. into this chaos [after the Bolshevik' revolution] came suprematism extolling the square [referring to the Squares of Malevich] as the very source of all creative expression, and then came communism and extolled work as the true source of man's heartbeat.”

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

Quote, 1920; in 'Suprematism in World Reconstruction,', El Lissitzky; as cited by Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers in El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts, transl. Helene Aldwinckle and Mary Whittall (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1968), p. 327
1915 - 1925

Communication