Creativity Quotes - Page 65

Surprise, unpredictability: these are the main materials of creativity.

After one month with a saxophone shoved in my mouth, my military combatant's enthusiasm disappeared completely. Instead of flying choppers behind enemy lines, I started to fantasise about living in New York, London or Paris.

I don't believe in inspiration. I believe in work, because while one works one's creativity is opened.

I got half-a-dozen paintings from that shattered plate.

It is the limitation of means that determines style, gives rise to new forms and makes creativity possible.

Creativity is the foundation of wealth. All progress comes from the creative minority. Under capitalism, wealth is less a stock of goods than a flow of ideas, the defining characteristic of which is surprise. If it were not surprising, we could plan it, and socialism would work.

Although people who had achieved a great deal in science and technology talked of the inscrutability of creativity, I was not convinced and disbelieved them immediately and without argument. Why should everything but creativity be open to scrutiny? What kind of process can this be which unlike all others is not subject to control?…What can be more alluring than the discovery of the nature of talented thought and converting this thinking from occasional and fleeting flashes into a powerful and controllable fire of knowledge.

In the belly of the furnace of creativity is a sexual fire; the flames twine about each other in fear and delight. The same sort of coiling, at a cooler, slower pace, is what the life of this planet looks like. The enormous spirals of typhoons, the twists and turns of mountain ranges and gorges, the waves and the deep ocean currents - a dragonlike writhing.

Creativity is a god who comes around only when he pleases, and it isn't very often. But when he does come around, he sits at my desk and folds his wings and I offer him whatever he wants.

To play chess on a truly high level requires a constant stream of exact, informed decisions, made in real time and under pressure from your opponent. What's more, it requires a synthesis of some very different virtues, all of which are necessary to good decisions: calculatioñ, creativity and a desire for results. If you ask a Grandmaster, an artist and a computer scientist what makes a good chess player, you'll get a glimpse of these different strengths in action.

All my sermons are prepared in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. As recreation is most pleasant and profitable in the sun, so homiletic creativity is best nourished before the Eucharist. The most brilliant ideas come from meeting God face to face. The Holy Spirit that presided at the Incarnation is the best atmosphere for illumination. Pope John Paul II keeps a small desk or writing pad near him whenever he is in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament; and I have done this all my life - I am sure for the same reason he does, because a lover always works better when the beloved is with him.

It hinders the creative work of the mind if the intellect examines too closely the ideas as they pour in.

I want to know whether you are a person devoted to creating or to exchanging in some respect or other: as a creator you belong tothe free, as an exchanger you are their slave and instrument.

The creative ability of an artist is manifested only if he succeeds in transforming the natural phenomena into 'another reality.' This part of the creative process as an independent element, if conscious and developed, hints at the possibility of creating a painting.

All you can do is learn the skills of movies. Neither colleges nor anyone else can teach you creativity. They can teach you abilities to work with - you know how to use the gifts you've been born with.

Americans worship creativity the way they worship physical beauty - as a way of enjoying elitism without guilt: God did it.

Do not confuse fantasy with imagination; the former consumes itself in daydreaming, the latter stimulates creativity in the arts and in the sciences.

If you want to be creative, don't try to do something new. Doing something new means NOT doing what's been done before, and that's a negative impulse. Negative impulses are frustrating. They're the opposite of creativity, and they never yield good ideas.

If man understood that "what I create has nothing to do with what anybody else is creating" then he wouldn't be so afraid of what others are doing.

The thing is to become a master and in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing.

As a graduate of the Zsa Zsa Gabor School of Creative mathematics, I honestly do not know how old I am.

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

You know, it’s the same thing as the question of free will and destiny, the question of creativity - you, the artist, you’re not the puppet of the piano, you’re not the puppet of the muse, but you’re not its master, either. It’s a relationship, it’s a conversation, and all it wants is to be treated with respect and dignity - and it will return ten thousand times over.

Creativity is contagious. And so is banality. Criticism is an art in itself. Don't let the dullness around destroy the creativity within. T.S. Eliot said, "honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry." Good to remember.

Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone.