Inspiring Creativity: A Collection of Motivational Quotes

"Art is the elimination of the unnecessary."

- Pablo Picasso

"Belief in your creative capacity lies at the heart of innovation."

- Tom and David Kelley

"True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Creativity doesn’t wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones."

- Bruce Garrabrandt

"Everything you can imagine is real."

- Pablo Picasso

"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while."

- Steve Jobs

"A creative life is an amplified life. It's a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life."

- Elizabeth Gilbert

"An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail."

- Edwin Land

"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination."

- Albert Einstein

"When learning is purposeful, creativity blossoms. When creativity blossoms, thinking emanates. When thinking emanates, knowledge is fully lit. When knowledge is lit, economy flourishes."

- A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

"Creativity is… seeing something that doesn’t exist already. You need to find out how you can bring it into being and that way be a playmate with God."

- Michele Shea

"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

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

- George Lois

"There’s room for everybody on the planet to be creative and conscious if you are your own person. If you’re trying to be like somebody else, then there isn’t."

- Tori Amos

"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos."

- Mary Shelley

"True alchemy lies in this formula: ‘Your memory and your senses are but the nourishment of your creative impulse.’"

- Arthur Rimbaud

"Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order."

- Virginia Woolf

"The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place."

- James Baldwin

"I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious."

- Albert Einstein

"There is no innovation or creativity without failure. Period."

- Brene Brown

"Don’t wait for inspiration. It comes while working."

- Henri Matisse

"Don't wait for inspiration. It comes while working."

- Henri Matisse

"Mistakes are a fact of life. It's the response to error that counts."

- Nikki Giovanni

"Creativity means breaking out of established patterns to look at things in a different way."

- Edward de Bono

"Creativity is seeing what others see and thinking what no one else ever thought."

- Albert Einstein

"It's no good being too easily swayed by people's opinions. You have to believe in yourself."

- Donatella Versace

"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

"Begin by learning to draw and paint like the old masters. After that, you can do as you like; everyone will respect you."

- Salvador Dalí

"Create with the heart; build with the mind."

- Criss Jami

"Deadlines and things make you creative."

- Jack White

"You can be cautious or you can be creative, but there's no such thing as a cautious creative."

- George Lois

"You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have."

- Maya Angelou

"There is no innovation and creativity without failure."

- Brené Brown

"Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen."

- Oprah Winfrey

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

- Leonardo Da Vinci

"Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use – do the work you want to see done."

- Austin Kleon

"Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye."

- Dorothy Parker

"You use a glass mirror to see your face. You use works of art to see your soul."

- George Bernard Shaw

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

- Jack London

"If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play."

- John Cleese

"Serious design, serious play, is something else. For one thing, it often happens spontaneously, intuitively, accidentally or incidentally."

- Paula Scher

"My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status."

- Sir Ken Robinson

"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after awhile. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things."

- Steve Jobs

"You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have."

- Maya Angelou

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

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action."

- Martha Graham

"The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."

- Sylvia Plath

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

- Mary Lou Cook

"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination."

- Jim Jarmusch

"Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity."

- Charles Mingus

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

- Erich Fromm

"Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things."

- Ray Bradbury

"I would rather be ashes than dust!"

- Jack London

"Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is the result of good work habits"

- Twyla Tharp

"You should keep on painting no matter how difficult it is, because this is all part of experience, and the more experience you have, the better it is…unless it kills you, and then you know you have gone too far"

- Alice Neel

"Creativity is intelligence having fun."

- Albert Einstein

"Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes."

- Neil Gaiman

"Creativity itself doesn't care at all about results - the only thing it craves is the process. Learn to love the process and let whatever happens next happen, without fussing too much about it. Work like a monk, or a mule, or some other representative metaphor for diligence. Love the work. Destiny will do what it wants with you, regardless."

- Elizabeth Gilbert

"Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth."

- Rumi

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will."

- George Bernard Shaw

"Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do."

- William Shakespeare

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

- Albert Einstein

"Creativity takes courage."

- Henri Matisse

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive."

- Pearl S. Buck

"Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity."

- Ray Bradbury

"Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change."

- Brene Brown

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."

- Scott Adams

"The creative adult is the child who survived."

- Ursula Leguin

"Creativity doesn't wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones."

- Bruce Garrabrandt

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

- Jack London

"Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people."

- Leo Burnett

"One very important aspect of motivation is the willingness to stop and look at things that no one else has bothered to look at. This simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity."

- Edward de Bono

"Creative ideas flourish best in a shop which preserves some spirit of fun. Nobody is in business for fun, but that does not mean there cannot be fun in business."

- Leo Burnett

"Listen to anyone with an original idea, no matter how absurd it may sound at first. If you put fences around people, you get sheep. Give people the room they need."

- William McKnight

"Stress and worry, they solve nothing. What they do is block creativity. You are not even able to think about the solutions. Every problem has a solution."

- Susan L. Taylor

"Great things are not done by impulse, but a series of small things brought together."

- Vincent Van Gogh

"You have all the reason to achieve your grandest dreams. Imagination plus innovation equals realization."

- Denis Waitly

"Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way."

- Edward de Bono

"The comfort zone is the great enemy to creativity; moving beyond it necessitates intuition, which in turn configures new perspectives and conquers fears."

- Dan Stevens

"Think left and think right, and think low and think high; Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try."

- Dr. Seuss

"Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can."

- Arthur Ashe

"If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old."

- Peter F. Drucker

"If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don’t just stick there scowling at the problem."

- Hilary Mantel

"Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not."

- Pablo Picasso

"To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it."

- Kurt Vonnegut

"Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature."

- Eric Hoffer

"Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you're passionate about something, then you're more willing to take risks."

- Yo-Yo Ma

"Without freedom, there is no creation."

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

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

- Joseph Chilton Pearce

"We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down."

- Kurt Vonnegut

"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

"Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity."

- Charles Mingus

"Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite – getting something down."

- Julia Cameron

"Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

- C.E.M. Joad

"One sure-fire way to stay creative; force yourself to learn something new."

- Harvey Mackay

"What keeps life fascinating is the constant creativity of the soul."

- Deepak Chopra

"Creativity, as has been said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know. Hence, to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted."

- George Kneller

"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

"The important thing for you is to be alert, to question, to find out, so that your own initiative may be awakened."

- Bruce Lee

"Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous."

- Bill Moyers

"Know where to find the information and how to use it. That’s the secret of success."

- Albert Einstein

"Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected."

- William Plomer

"Creativity is contagious, pass it on."

- Albert Einstein

"Your ego can become an obstacle to your work. If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity."

- Marina Abramovic

"The creative process is a process of surrender, not control."

- Julia Cameron

"There’s no one way to be creative. Any old way will work."

- Ray Bradbury

"The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"The chief enemy of creativity is good sense."

- Pablo Picasso

"When you make music or write or create, it's really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you're writing about at the time."

- Lady Gaga

"There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun."

- Pablo Picasso

"You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right."

- Steve Jobs

"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-Exupery

"Inspiration usually comes during work rather than before it."

- Madeleine L’Engle

"Write while the heat is in you."

- Henry David Thoreau

"Ideas come from daydreaming. They come from drifting."

- Neil Gaiman

"To be creative means to be in love with life."

- Osho

"Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor."

- Steven Pressfield

"Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

"Inspiration comes and goes, creativity is the result of practice."

- Phil Cousineau

"Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist."

- Pablo Picasso

"You see a child play, and it is so close to seeing an artist paint, for in play a child says things without uttering a word. You can see how he solves his problems. You can also see what’s wrong. Young children, especially, have enormous creativity, and whatever’s in them rises to the surface in free play"

- Erik Erikson

"Creating opportunities means looking where others are not."

- Mark Cuban

"Creativity is an energy. It’s a precious energy, and it’s something to be protected. A lot of people take for granted that they’re a creative person, but I know from experience, feeling it in myself, it is a magic; it is an energy. And it can’t be taken for granted."

- Ava DuVernay

"The challenge for leaders is to learn how to think differently - and even more powerfully, how to think differently together."

- Nick Udall

"Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm."

- Earl Nightingale

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

- Gerald G. Jampolsky

"Mindless habitual behavior is the enemy of innovation."

- Rosabeth Moss Kanter

"Rational thoughts never drive people's creativity the way emotions do."

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

"It’s easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It’s a lot more difficult to perform one."

- Chuck Palahniuk

"Originality is the essence of true scholarship. Creativity is the soul of the true scholar."

- Nnamdi Azikiwe

"If it doesn’t sell; it isn’t creative."

- David Ogilvy

"The urge to destroy is also a creative urge."

- Mikhail Bakunin

"Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas."

- Donatella Versace

"True alchemy lies in this formula: ‘Your memory and your senses are but the nourishment of your creative impulse’."

- Arthur Rimbaud

"Creativity requires input, and that's what research is. You're gathering material with which to build."

- Gene Luen Yang

"Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you're a human being, you feel, you suffer."

- Marilyn Monroe

"Creativity is discontent translated into arts."

- Eric Hoffer

"Negativity is the enemy of creativity."

- David Lynch

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

- John Maynard Keynes

"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together."

- Vincent van Gogh

"Learning never exhausts the mind."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"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 Company

"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."

- Albert Einstein

"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people."

- Henry Thomas Buckle

"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all."

- Oscar Wilde

"I don't know about you, but I judge books by their cover every day."

- Seth Godin

"Rejection is an opportunity for your selection."

- Bernard Branson

"A tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid."

- Stephen King

"There are no old roads to new directions."