In business and marketing – creativity is everything. If you just copy your competitors, your work may be half as effective, but if you think wildly outside the box, you can capture the imaginations of millions or billions.
To inspire your creativity today – we’ve curated 101 awesome quotes about creativity, how to get more of it – from some brilliant and creative thinkers, you may have heard from Maya Angelou, to Steve Jobs, to Yo-yo ma. Enjoy!
- “Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to“. – Jim Jarmusch
- “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use the more you have.” – Maya Angelou
“You can’t use up creativity, the more you use the more you know.” – Maya Angelou - “Without change, there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable.” – William Pollard
- [bctt tweet=”“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” username=”hookagency”]
- “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
- “Creativity is not talent but attitude.” – Jenova Chen
- “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. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.” – Steve Jobs
- “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.” – Steve Jobs
- “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” – Helen Keller
- “Creativity is intelligence having fun.” – Albert Einstein
- “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 inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.” – Mary Lou Cook
- “The chief enemy of creativity is “good” sense.” – Pablo Picasso
- “Creativity involves breaking out of expected patterns in order to look at things in a different way.” – Edward de Bono
- “If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” – Albert Einstein
- “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” – Albert Einstein
- “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” – Albert Einstein
- “You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.” – Albert Einstein
- “Information is not knowledge. The only source of knowledge is experience.” – Albert Einstein
- “Creativity is contagious, pass it on.” – Albert Einstein
- “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious. – Albert Einstein
“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” – Albert Einstein - “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” –Albert Einstein
- “If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much.” –Steve Jobs
- “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.” –Steve Jobs
- “The way to ratchet up our species is to get better things to more people – products with spirit and creativity.” –Steve Jobs
- [bctt tweet=”“Stay hungry, stay foolish.” –Steve Jobs” username=”hookagency”]
- “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” –Steve Jobs
- “A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.” Ayn Rand
- “Your personal life, your professional life, and your creative life are all intertwined. I went through a few very difficult years where I felt like a failure. But it was actually really important for me to go through that. Struggle, for me, is the most inspirational thing in the world at the end of the day – as long as you treat it that way.” – Skylar Grey
- “Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
- “Every human has four endowments – self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change.” Stephen Covey
- “Your life is your canvas, and you are the masterpiece. There are a million ways to be kind, amazing, fabulous, creative, bold, and interesting.” – Kerli
- “The creative people I admire seem to share many characteristics: A fierce restlessness. Healthy cynicism. A real-world perspective. An ability to simplify. Restraint. Patience. A genuine balance of confidence and insecurity. And most importantly, humanity.” – David Droga
- “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
- “To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.” – Albert Einstein
- “When you show deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That’s when you can get more creative in solving problems.” – Stephen Covey
- [bctt tweet=”“Experiencing sadness and anger can make you feel more creative, and by being creative, you can get beyond your pain or negativity.” – Yoko Ono” username=”hookagency”]
- “As a boss, as a CEO, as a creative director, as a chef, I’ve learned that failure will always come. I’ve learned to give it a big squeeze, smile at it, humble myself to it and then use it as a springboard to send me on my way to strength, success, and fulfillment.” – Christina Tosi
- “The role of a creative leader is not to have all the ideas; it’s to create a culture where everyone can have ideas and feel that they’re valued.” Ken Robinson
- “The most creative people have this childlike facility to play.” – John Cleese
- “The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn’t think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.” – Steve Ballmer
- “The highest levels of performance come to people who are centered, intuitive, creative, and reflective – people who know to see a problem as an opportunity.” – Deepak Chopra
- “For your own self-respect and sanity, your creative freedom, you have to be careful that you don’t rely too much on other people’s opinions of what you do because it can stunt and inhibit you.” – Luke Evans
- “When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.” – Cynthia Heimel
- “The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.” – Pablo Picasso
- “Works must be conceived with fire the soul executed with clinical coolness.” – Joan Miró
- “He who would be a man must, therefore, be a nonconformist.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “The most talented, thought-provoking, game-changing people are never normal.” – Richard Branson
- “If you’re not doing some things that are crazy, then you’re doing the wrong things.”- Larry Page
- “Create with the heart; build with the mind.” – Criss Jami
- “Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.” – Jack Kerouac
- “The most dangerous idea is silencing people.” – Naval Ravikant
- “Originality is the best form of rebellion.” – Mike Sasso
- “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.” – Brené Brown
“Vulnerabilty: Is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.” – Brene Brown - “If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.” – Pablo Picasso
- “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” – Gustave Flaubert
- “The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.” – James Baldwin
- “We adore chaos because we love to produce order.” – M. C. Escher
- “When we build, let us think that we build forever.” – John Ruskin
- “When you can do a common thing in an uncommon way; you will command the attention of the world.” – George Washington Carver
- “Great things are not done by impulse, but a series of small things brought together.” – Vincent Van Gogh
- “If you’re to create something powerful and important, you must at the very least be driven by an equally powerful inner force.” – Ryan Holiday
- [bctt tweet=”“If it doesn’t sell; it isn’t creative.” – David Ogilvy” username=”hookagency”]
- “That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of our time.” – John Stuart Mill
- “Art, freedom and creativity will change society faster than politics. ” – Victor Pinchuk
- “So go on, get angry. But keep your mouth shut and go do your work.” – Austin Kleon
- “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” – Carl Sagan
- “The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration.” – Claude Monet
- “The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before.” – Neil Gaiman
- “Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.” – Jean Dubuffet
- “Absurdity and anti-absurdity are the two poles of creative energy.” – Karl Lagerfeld
- “The question is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.” – Martin Luther King Jr
- “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
- “When I am completely myself, entirely alone during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly.” – Mozart
- “The question isn’t who is going to let me; It’s who is going to stop me.” – Ayn Rand
“The Question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” - “Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “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
- “The first and most important thing an individual can do is to become an individual again, decontrol himself, train himself as to what is going on and win back as much independent ground for himself as possible.” – William S. Burroughs
- [bctt tweet=”“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” – Andy Warhol” username=”hookagency”]
- “It seems like the world is crumbling out there, but it is actually a really great time in your life to get a little crazy, follow your curiosity and be ambitious about it.” – Larry Page (Google)
- “Perfection is no small thing, but it is made up of small things.” – Michelangelo
- “Creativity takes courage.” – Henri Matisse
- “I shut my eyes in order to see.” – Paul Gauguin
- “To be an artist is to believe in life.” – Henry Moore
- “You are your only limit.”
- “Good art inspires; Good design motivates.” – Otl Aicher
“Good art inspires; good design motivates.” – Oti Aicher - “The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic.” – G.K. Chesterton
- “The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.” – Mikhail Bakunin
- “Replace fear with curiosity.” – Steven Spielberg
- “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.” – Chuck Close
- “When all think alike, then no one is thinking.” – Walter Lippman
- “Without freedom, there is no creation.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti
- “My humor is my creativity, and my skepticism is a gift.” – J. Tillman
- “If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old. ” – Peter F. Drucker
- “Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.” – Austin Kleon
- “Creativity is as important as literacy.” – Ken Robinson
- “Ideas come from everything.” – Alfred Hitchcock
- “Cowardice is the most terrible of vices.” – Mikhail Bulgakov
- “Everything is interesting. Look closer.”
“Everything is interest – look closer” - [bctt tweet=”“You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.” – Jack London” username=”hookagency”]
