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

"All human beings are born with the same creative potential. Most people squander theirs away on a million superfluous things. I expend mine on one thing and one thing only: my art."
Pablo Picasso

"Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes."
Thomas Wentworth Higginson

"To me the desire to create and to have control over your own life, irrespective of the politics of the time or social structures, has always been a part of the human spirit. What I did not fully realize was that work could open the doors to my heart."
Anita Roddick, Founder/CEO, The Body Shop

"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought."
Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi

"There is nothing mysterious about originality, nothing fantastic. Originality is merely the step beyond."
Louis Danz

"Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or doing it better."
John Updike

"An idea is a feat of association."
Robert Frost

"Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born."
Dr. Dale Turner

"The main fuel to speed the world's progress is our stock of knowledge, and the brake is our lack of imagination."
Julian Simon

"If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself."
Rollo May

"Creativity, my students learn, is as natural a function of the mind as breathing or digestion are natural functions of the body."
John Kao

"I believe everybody is creative, and everybody is talented. I just don't think that everybody is disciplined. I think that's a rare commodity."
Al Hirschfield

"I would sort out all the arguments and see which belonged to fear and which to creativeness. Other things being equal, I would make the decision which had the largest number of creative reasons on its side."
Katharine Butler Hathaway

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

"What is now proved was once imagined."
William Blake

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."
George Bernard Shaw

"The imagination equips us to perceive reality when it is not fully materialized."
Mary Caroline Richards

"Imagination is the highest kite one can fly."
Lauren Bacall

"The future is not a result of choice among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created—created first in mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination."
John Schaar

"Art is a terrific vehicle because it unlocks kid's imaginations, touches us in emotional ways, brings to life what might otherwise be abstract."
Ted Mitchell

"A firm grounding in the arts teaches practical skills and such characteristics as self-discipline and critical thinking. The arts naturally embrace paradox and ambiguity; to study them is to learn flexible thinking. Those who have trained in an art form are more likely not only to grasp the nuances in real life, say the experts, but also to persevere in finding novel solutions to everyday problems."
Susan Gaines

"We need people who can read and write. But what we really need is people who can not only read the instructions, but change them. They need to be able to think outside the lines."
Richard Gurin, CEO and President, Binney & Smith, Croyola Products

"Insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting different results."
Albert Einstein

"To stimulate creativity, one must develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition."
Albert Einstein

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
Albert Einstein

"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

"Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is."
Sir Francis Bacon

"The principle mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers."
Arthur Koestler

"Man can only become what he is able to consciously imagine, or to 'image forth.'"
Dane Rudhyar

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

"Every artist was first an amateur."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I learned . . . that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness."
Brenda Ueland

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

"There are two ways of being creative. One can sing and dance. Or one can create an environment in which singers and dancers flourish."
Warren Bennis

"Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent oppositeand enemy, the sense of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence."
Norman Podhoretz

"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."
Mark Twain

"Imagination and fiction make up more than three-quarters of our real life."
Simone Weil

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."
Herman Melville

"Education for creativity is nothing short of education for living."
Eric Fromm

"Creativity is the encounter of the intensively conscious human being with his world."
Rollo May

"Far out thinking is a means to an end. To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning."
Henry David Thoreau

"The vast majority of problems, decisions and situations which confront us daily are those which do not have just one answer. Several solutions are usually possible. Logic suggests that if one can mentally generate many possible solutions, the more likely it is that an optimum solution will be reached. This a creative process—the formation of new and useful relationships."
Richard E. Manelis

If you can walk you can dance, if you can talk you can sing.
Zimbabwean proverb

People who do not break things first will never create anything.
Tagalog (Filipino) proverb

"Money isn't the scarcest resource—imagination is."
Linda Yates, Painted Wolf Ltd.

"Happiness . . . it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort."
Franklin D. Roosevelt

"To think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted."
George Kneller

"The ability to relate and to connect, sometimes in odd and yet striking fashion, lies at the very heart of any creative use of the mind, no matter in what field or discipline."
George J. Seidel

"You unlock the door with the key of imagination."
Rod Serling

"In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature."
Wallace Stevens

"Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is."
Francis Bacon

"Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual."
Arthur Koestler, novelist

"If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied." Alfred Nobel

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

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."
Pablo Picasso

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

"You are creative. Your creativity may be in a deep sleep, but it is there. All you have to do is wake it up and put it to use."
Kevin Eikenberry, Speaker and Consultant

"Let us consider an alternative style of thinking, which we can call 'creative thinking.' It is playfully instructive to note that the word 'reactive' and the word 'creative' are made up of exactly the same letters. The only difference between the two is that you 'C' [see] differently."
John Quincy Adams, U.S. President

"The reward for conformity was that everyone liked you except yourself."
Rita Mae Brown

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."
Herman Melville

"The main fuel to speed the world's progress is our stock of knowledge, and the brake is our lack of imagination."
Julian Simon, economist

"It is wonderful to be in on the creation of something, see it used, and then walk away and smile at it."
Lady Bird Johnson, U.S. First Lady

"I dwell in possibility."
Emily Dickinson

"The only job we have been given when we came to this earth is to create. Everything we do is a creation, from a job, to children to thoughts. We all create all the time, it is all we do."
Tom Justin, author and trainer

"Down time is where we become ourselves, looking into the middle distance, kicking at the curb, lying on the grass or sitting on the stoop and staring at the tedious blue of the summer sky. I don't believe you can write poetry, or compose music, or become an actor without downtime, and plenty of it, a hiatus that passes for boredom but is really the quiet moving of the wheels inside that fuel creativity."
Anna Quindlen, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer

"The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it."
Carl. R. Rogers

"Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity . . . any activity becomes creative
when the doer cares about doing it right, or better. . . ."
John Updike, novelist, poet

"Defying conventional ideas can yield unconventional returns."
Jackson W. Robinson, President, Winslow Management Company

"If you can imagine it, You can achieve it. If you can dream it, You can become it."
William Arthur Ward

"We are told never to cross a bridge until we come to it, but this world is owned by men who have 'crossed bridges' in their imagination far ahead of the crowd."
Anonymous

"A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something."
Frank Capra, film director

"You can't depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus."
Mark Twain

"It takes courage to be creative. Just as soon as you have a new idea, you are a minority of one."
E. Paul Torrence

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

"Discipline and focused awareness . . . contribute to the act of creation."
John Poppy

"The innovator is not an opponent of the old, but a proponent of the new."
Lyle E. Schaller, author

"Change cannot be avoided. Change provides the opportunity for innovation. It gives you the chance to demonstrate your creativity."
Keshavan Nair, author and professor

"Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual."
Arthur Koestler, novelist

"Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future."
Charles Kettering

"When one paints an ideal, one does not need to limit one's imagination."
Ellen Key, author

"The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas."
Linus Pauling

"Live out of your imagination, not your history."
Stephen Covey

"Innovation is the creation of the new or the re-arranging of the old in a new way."
Mike Vance

"The innovative point is the pivotal moment when talented and motivated people seek the opportunity to act on their ideas and dreams."
W. Arthur Porter

"The world leaders in innovation and creativity will also be the world leaders in everything else."
Harold R. McAlindon

"I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it."
Terry Pratchett, author

"Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense dancing."
William James

"Live in your imagination today, for tomorrow it can become your reality."
Kevin Eikenberry, author and speaker

"If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong."
Charles Kettering, inventor

"Innovators and men of genius have almost always been regarded as fools at the beginning (and very often at the end) of their careers."
Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

"The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar. Thus, innovators have generally been persecuted and always derided as fools and madmen."
Aldous Huxley

"I believe in being an innovator."
Walt Disney

"Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted."
Martin Luther King, Jr.

"When you innovate, you've got to be prepared for everyone telling you you're nuts."
Larry Ellison

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower."
Steve Jobs

"This is the nature of genius, to be able to grasp the knowable even when no one else recognizes that it is present."
Deepak Chopra

"The winner is the chef who takes the same ingredients as everyone else and produces the best result." Edward de Bono

"We haven't the money so we have to think."
Sir Earnest Rutherford

"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere."
Carl Sagan

"Chaos in the world brings uneasiness, but it also allows the opportunity for creativity and growth."
Tom Barrett, public speaker, author, and entrepreneur

"The power of imagination makes us infinite."
John Muir

"Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination."
Vincent van Gogh