Quotes to Keep You Creative

Here are some of my favourite quotes that keep me sane when I am creating:

• Beatrix Potter: Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.
• Buckminster Fuller:There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.
• Eric Fromm:Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self.
• Franklin D Roosevelt: Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
• Pablo Picasso:All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
• Scott Adams: Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
• Sharon Welch: Injustice can be eliminated, but human conflicts and natural limitations cannot be removed. The conflicts of social life and the limitations of nature cannot be controlled or transcended. They can, however, be endured and survived. It is possible for there to be a dance with life, a creative response to its intrinsic limits and challenges ...
• Virginia Woolf:Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order.

People who have had a very restricted vision, with hindsight their comments can be used as powerful examples of what can happen if you don't allow creative thoughts to flourish:

• "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." --Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
• "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." --Western Union internal memo, 1876
• "The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" --David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.
• "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." --Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
• "Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy." --Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

People who have had a much more creative, open view of life:

• "There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes." -- Buckminster Fuller
• "Standing still is the fastest way of moving backwards in a rapidly changing world. Imagination is the highest kite one can fly" -- Lauren Bacall.
• "Instead of pouring knowledge into people's heads, we need to help them grind a new set of eyeglasses so that we can see the world in a new way." -- J S Brown.
• The opposite of creativity is cynicism. -- Esa Saarinen
• "Problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework in which the problems were created." --Albert Einstein.
• "Go some distance away because the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance, and a lack of harmony of proportion is rapidly seen." -- Leonardo da Vinci.
• "Creativity is the ability to see relationships where none exist." -- Thomas Disch
• "If you can dream it, you can do it." -- Walt Disney.
• "Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream." -- Malcolm Muggeridge.

Then if that all makes you feel tired and needing a break then the following is for you:

"My contribution is undiminished, even when I need to rest."

Happy Creative Days to you :)