To create is to cause something to exist by one’s actions. Creativity and the creative process are about taking original ideas, inspired from imagination, and then producing something new. To be creative means to generate original ideas and possibilities that will, when applied, be useful, entertaining, or beautiful, or otherwise worthwhile. What part discipline and spontaneity play in creativity are matters of debate. Artists and thinkers have tried to put into words what creativity is about. Here are some of those words.
Perhaps what differentiates highly creative ideas from ordinary ones is some combined sense of beauty, simplicity, and harmony.
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.
It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities and talents.
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
In the case of the creative mind, it seems to me, the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it review and inspect the multitude. You worthy critics, or whatever you may call yourselves, are ashamed or afraid of the momentary and passing madness which is found in all real creators, the longer or shorter duration of which distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer. Hence your complaints of unfruitfulness, for you reject too soon and discriminate too severely.
Large organization is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.
The human mind isn’t a computer; it cannot progress in an orderly fashion down a list of candidate moves and rank them by a score down to the hundredth of a pawn the way a chess machine does. Even the most disciplined human mind wanders in the heat of competition. This is both a weakness and a strength of human cognition. Sometimes these undisciplined wanderings only weaken your analysis. Other times they lead to inspiration, to beautiful or paradoxical moves that were not on your initial list of candidates.
One of the first things a relationship therapist learns is that couples argue to burn up energy that could be used for something else. In fact, arguments often serve the purpose of using up energy, so that the couple do not have to take the courageous, creative leap into an unknown they fear. Arguing serves the function of being a zone of familiarity into which you can retreat when you are afraid of making a creative breakthrough.
Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will.
While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die – whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness.
Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent, and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play.
The world is but a canvas to the imagination.
Poetry is man’s rebellion against being what he is.
We tend to think of the Faustian man, the one who fabricates, manipulates, seduces and ends up destroying. But the new image will be man the creator, the artist, the player.
If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society.
I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.
If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.
The whole difference between a man of genius and other men, it has been said a thousand times, and most truly, is that the first remains in great part a child, seeing with the large eyes of children, in perpetual wonder, not conscious of much knowledge–conscious, rather of infinite ignorance, and yet infinite power; a fountain of eternal admiration, delight, and creative force within him meeting the ocean of visible and governable things around him.
The real magic wand is the child’s own mind.
When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.
Leadership is about creating, day by day, a domain in which we and those around us continually deepen our understanding of reality and are able to participate in shaping the future. This, then, is the deeper territory of leadership — collectively ‘listening to what is wanting to emerge in the world, and then having the courage to do what is required.’
In every human being there is a child who only wants to play, and the most attractive game is mystery. The mysterious content of the human soul wanders through the meandering corridors of a mythical labyrinth, with underground congregations with candles (or illuminated by candles), secret passages in the double walls of castles, and treasures hidden in the halls!
Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.
Playtime is a vital component of idea generation and fresh inspiration. It gives you permission to be in a state of discovery without purpose or agenda.
Art does not solve problems but makes us aware of their existence. It opens our eyes to see and our brain to imagine.
Thou art greatly wise, my friend, and ever respected by me, yet I find not in your theory or your scope, room enough for the lyric inspirations, or the mysterious whispers of life. To me it seems that it is madder never to abandon oneself, than often to be infatuated; better to be wounded, a captive, and a slave, than always to walk in armor.
Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.
When I was five, I think, that’s when I started wanting to be an actress. I loved to play. I didn’t like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own boundaries.
