Quotes on CREATIVITY and INNOVATION

"Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service. It is capable of being presented as a discipline, capable of being learned, capable of being practiced. Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation, the changes and their symptoms that indicate opportunities for successful innovation. And they need to know and to apply the principles of successful innovation."

— Peter Drucker

"Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions"

— Albert Einstein

"I roamed the countryside searching for the answers to things I did not understand. Why shells existed on the tops of mountains along with the imprints of coral and plant and seaweed usually found in the sea. Why the thunder lasts a longer time than that which causes it and why immediately on its creation the lightening becomes visible to the eye while thunder requires time to travel. How the various circles of water form around the spot which has been struck by a stone and why a bird sustains itself in the air. These questions and other strange phenomena engaged my thought throughout my life."

— Leonardo da Vinci

"Slaying sacred cows makes great steaks."

— Dick Nicolose

"In the modern world of business it is useless to be a creative original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. Management cannot be expected to recognize a good idea unless it is presented to them by a good salesman."

— David M. Ogilvy

"Innovation is fostered by information gathered from new connections; from insights gained by journeys into other disciplines or places; from active, collegial networks and fluid, open boundaries. Innovation arises from ongoing circles of exchange, where information is not just accumulated or stored, but created. Knowledge is generated anew from connections that weren't there before."

— Margaret J. Wheatley
Leadership and the New Science

"When you are completely absorbed or caught up in something, you become oblivious to things around you, or to the passage of time. It is this absorption in what you are doing that frees your unconscious and releases your creative imagination."

— Dr. Rollo May

"A person might be able to play without being creative, but he sure can't be creative without playing."

— Kurt Hanks and Jay Parry

"The achievement of excellence can occur only if the organization promotes a culture of creative dissatisfaction."

— Lawrence Miller

"Replace either/or thinking with plus thinking."

— Craig Hickman

"[I]in 1913, the first assembly line was implemented at Ford Motor Company. The process grew like a vine and eventually spread to all phases of the manufacture of Ford cars, and then through the entire world of heavy industry. There can be no doubt that a powerful revolution occurred at Highland Park—but it was not the assembly line itself that provided the power. Rather, it was the creation of an atmosphere in which improvement was the real product: a better, cheaper, Model T followed naturally. Every man on the payroll was invited to contribute ideas, and the good ones were implemented without delay."

— Douglas Brinkley
Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and A Century of Progress

"Observe what is with undivided awareness."

— Bruce Lee

"History can’t give attention to what’s been lost, hidden, or deliberately buried; it is mostly a telling of success, not the partial failures that enabled success."

— Scott Berkun

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

— Albert Einstein
On Science

"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties."

— Erich Fromm

"It's the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you're mad, then dangerous, then there's a pause and then you can't find anyone who disagrees with you."

— Tony Benn
British politician, in the Observer

"The world is but a canvas to our imaginations."

— Henry David Thoreau

"Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything."

— George Lois

"If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original."

— Sir Ken Robinson

"The joy is in creating, not maintaining."

— Vince Lombardi

"Nothing is so embarrassing as watching someone do something that you said could not be done."

— Sam Ewing

"Other things being equal, it is the person who can lift his work up to the plane of the intuitional and inspiration who achieves greatness, both in his work and in his career."

— Stanwood Cobb, The Importance of Creativity

"We proceed by doubt, by trial and error, by resisting the impulse to lunge after certainty."

— William Deresiewicz

"There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns."

— Edward de Bono

"There is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost."

— Martha Graham

"A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow."

— Charles Brower

"When we engage in what we are naturally suited to do, our work takes on the quality of play and it is play that stimulates creativity."

— Linda Naiman

"The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself."

— Alan Alda

"It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all."

— Edward de Bono

"A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely . . . but by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature and can then draw him at every attitude."

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way."

— William James

"Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun."

— Mary Lou Cook

"You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club."

— Jack London

"Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures."

— Henry Ward Beecher

"The key question isn’t “What fosters creativity?” But it is why in God’s name isn’t everyone creative? Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? I think therefore a good question might be not why do people create? But why do people not create or innovate? We have got to abandon that sense of amazement in the face of creativity, as if it were a miracle if anybody created anything."

— Abraham Maslow

"Nothing is done. Everything in the world remains to be done or done over. The greatest picture is not yet painted, the greatest play isn’t written, the greatest poem is unsung. There isn’t in all the world a perfect railroad, nor a good government, nor a sound law. Physics, mathematics, and especially the most advanced and exact of the sciences are being fundamentally revised. . . Psychology, economics, and sociology are awaiting a Darwin, whose work in turn is awaiting an Einstein."

— Lincoln Steffens

"The world is but a canvas to the imagination."

— Henry David Thoreau

"We have come to think of art and work as incompatible, or at least independent categories and have for the first time in history created an industry without art."

— Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

"So you see, imagination needs moodling – long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering."

— Brenda Ueland

"If you put fences around people, you get sheep. Give people the room they need."

— William McKnight, 3M President

"Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has had an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference."

— Nolan Bushnell

"All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning."

— Albert Camus

"You write your first draft with your heart and you re-write with your head. The first key to writing is to write, not to think."

— Sean Connery

"Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious... and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."

— Walt Disney

"The central task of education is to implant a will and a facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together. In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."

— Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral."

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"The wastebasket is a writer’s best friend."

— Isaac Bashevis Singer

"Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen."

— John Steinbeck

"If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."

— Vincent van Gogh

"Where observation is concerned, chance favors the prepared mind."

— Louis Pasteur

"I shall become a master in this art only after a great deal of practice."

— Erich Fromm

"I began by tinkering around with some old tunes I knew. Then, just to try something different, I set to putting some music to the rhythm that I used in jerking ice-cream sodas at the Poodle Dog. I fooled around with the tune more and more until at last, lo and behold, I had completed my first piece of finished music."

— Duke Ellington

"Because of their courage, their lack of fear, they (creative people) are willing to make silly mistakes. The truly creative person is one who can think crazy; such a person knows full well that many of his great ideas will prove to be worth less. The creative person is flexible; he is able to change as the situation changes, to break habits , to face indecision and changes in conditions without undue stress. He is not threatened by the unexpected as rigid, inflexible people are."

— Frank Goble

"Invention strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come from nothing."

— Sir Joshua Reynolds

"Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing."

— Thomas Huxley

"There is no use trying,” said Alice. “One can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

— Lewis Carroll

"Creativity is contagious. Pass it on."

— Albert Einstein

"The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done – men who are creative, inventive and discoverers."

— Jean Piaget

"The creative person is willing to live with ambiguity. He doesn’t need problems solved immediately and can afford to wait for the right ideas."

— Abe Tannenbaum

"An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come."

— Victor Hugo

"An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea."

— Edward de Bono

"Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self."

— Erich Fromm

"Creativity is the quality that you bring to the activity that you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach – how you look at things . . . Whatsoever you do, if you do it joyfully, if you do it lovingly, if your act of doing is not purely economical, then it is creative."

— Osho

"Every day is an opportunity to be creative – the canvas is your mind, the brushes and colours are your thoughts and feelings, the panorama is your story, the complete picture is a work of art called, ‘my life’. Be careful what you put on the canvas of your mind today – it matters."

— Innerspace

"It seems to be one of the paradoxes of creativity that in order to think originally, we must familiarize ourselves with the ideas of others."

— George Kneller

"The world is but a canvas to the imagination."

— Henry David Thoreau

"To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it."

— Osho

"We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own and other’s people’s models, learn to be ourselves and allow our natural channel to open."

— Shakti Gawain

"When you are describing, A shape, or sound, or tint; Don’t state the matter plainly, But put it in a hint; And learn to look at all things, With a sort of mental squin."

— Lewis Carroll

"Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game."

— Goethe

"I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones."

— John Cage

"What is an artist? A provincial who finds hims elf somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one.... It’s this in-between that I’m calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one—which is really the realm of the artist."

— Federico Fellini

"To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong."

— Joseph Chilton Pierce

"By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The non-existent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired."

— Nikos Kazantzakis

"Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric."

— Bertrand Russell

"The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones."

— John Maynard Keynes

"Life is trying things to see if they work."

— Ray Bradbury

"The stone age didn’t end because they ran out of stones."

— Unknown

"Truly creative people care a little about what they have done, and a lot about what they are doing. Their driving focus is the life force that surges in them now."

— Alan Cohen

"A truly creative person rids him or herself of all self-imposed limitations."

— Gerald G. Jampolsky

"Creative power, is that receptive attitude of expectancy which makes a mold into which the plastic and as yet undifferentiated substance can flow and take the desired form."

— Thomas Troward

"Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything."

— George Lois

"A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition."

— Charles Caleb Colton

“If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.”

— Albert Einstein

“Innovation is the central issue in economic prosperity.”

— Michael Porter

“Innovation comes from saying NO to 1,000 things.”

— Steve Jobs

“Innovation is taking two things that already exist and putting them together in a new way.”

— Tom Freston