Creativity is the ability to see relationships The best way to predict the future is

where none exist. to create it

- Thomas Disch - Peter Drucker
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Nothing is exciting if you know what Follow your bliss.
the outcome is going to be. - Joseph Campbell
- Joseph Campbell

The privilege of a lifetime is being who A hunch is creativity trying to tell you
you are. something.
- Joseph Campbell - Frank Capra

Flaming enthusiasm, backed by horse Whenever man comes up with a better

sense and persistence, is the quality mousetrap, nature immediately comes up
that most frequently makes for success. with a better mouse.
- Dale Carnegie - James Carswell

No matter how old you get, if you can An original writer is not one who imitates
keep the desire to be creative, you're nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.
keeping the man-child alive. - Francois Rene Chateaubriand
- John Cassavetes

One sees great things from the valley, When the way comes to an end, then change
only small things from the peak. - having changed, you pass through.
- G. K. Chesterton - I Ching

I am easily satisfied with the best. No idea is so outlandish that it should not be
- Winston Churchill considered with a searching but at the same
time steady eye.
- Winston Churchill

True genius resides in the capacity for Success is never final, failure is never fatal,
evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, it's courage that counts.
and conflicting information. - Winston Churchill
- Winston Churchill

Great opportunity is usually disguised Creativity is the process of discovering

as unsolvable problems. something you did not start out with.
- Gretchen G. Clement. - Collingwood

Music is the art of thinking with Four dimensions of creativity: creation,

sounds. productivity, originality, and
- Jules Combarie expressiveness. The courage to take risks
and persistence are the key characteristics
of the creative person. The other
characteristics are repeated patterns of

We don't like their sound, and guitar
music is on the way out. (Response to
the music of "The Beatles" in 1962)
- Decca Recording Company
A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides,
the market research reports say
America likes crispy cokies, not soft
and chewy cookies like you make.
- Response to Debbi Fields' idea of
starting Mst Field's Cookies
Even the woodpecker owes his success
to the fact that he uses his head and
keeps pecking away until he finished
the job he started.
- Coleman Cox
There's as much risk in doing nothing
as in doing something.
- Trammell Crow
Do not fear mistakes. There are none.
- Miles Davis
When asked what single event was
most helpful in developing the Theory
of Relativity, Albert Einstein replied,
"Figuring out how to think about the
problem".
- W. Edwards Deming
Knowledge needs to be a verb.
- W. Edwards Denning
The whole difference between
construction and creation is exactly
thinking, feeling and behaving
- from Eli Lilly and Company
Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I'll
remember. Involve me and I'll understand.
- Confucius
Nothing in the world can take the place of
persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more
comomn than unsuccessful men without
talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius
is almost a proverb. Education will not; the
world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are
omnipotent.
- Calvin Coolidge
No one travels so high as he who knows not
where he is going.
- Oliver Cromwell
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be
understood.
- Madame Curie
What moves men of genius, or rather what
inspires their work, is not new ideas, but
their obsession with the idea that what has
already been said is still not enough.
- Eugene Delacroix
Two basic rules of life are:
1) Change is inevitable
2) Everybody resists change.
- W. Edwards Deming
A problem well-stated is a problem half-
solved.
- John Dewey
Write as if you are dying.
- Annie Dillard
this: that a thing constructed can only
be loved after it is constructed; but a
thing created is loved before it exists.
- Charles Dickens

Creativity is the ability to see The best way to predict the future is to
relationships where none exist. create it
- Thomas Disch - Peter Drucker

Genius is (1%) one percent inspiration, I'll try anything...I'll even try Limburger
and (99%) ninety-nine percent cheese!
perspiration. - Thomas Edison
- Thomas Edison

Everything comes to him who hustles There's a way to do it better...find it

while he waits - Thomas Edison
- Thomas Edison

Opportunity is missed by most people
because it is dressed in overalls and it
looks like work.
- Thomas Edison
Nearly every man who develops an idea
works it up to the point where it looks
impossible, and then he gets discouraged.
That's not the place to become discouraged.
- Thomas Edison

The most beautiful and profound If we knew what we were doing, it would
emotion we can experience is the not be called research would it?
sensation of the mystical. It is the - Albert Einstein
sower of all true science. He to whom
this emotion is a stranger, who can no
longer wonder and stand rapt in awe,
is good as dead.
- Albert Einstein

The world we have made as a result of Common sense is the collection of

the level of thinking we have done thus prejudices acquired by the age of eighteen.
far creates problems we cannot solve at - Albert Einstein
the same level of thinking at which we
created them.
- Albert Einstein

The mere formulation of a problem is Great spirits have always encountered

far more often essential than its violent opposition from mediocre minds
solution, which may be merely a - Albert Einstein
matter of mathematical or
experimental skill. To raise new
questions, new possibilities, to regard
old problems from a new angle
requires creative imagination and
marks real advances in science.
- Albert Einstein

1. Out of clutter, find simplicity. Everything should be made as simple as

2. From discord, find harmony. possible, but not simpler.
3. In the middle of difficulty lies - Albert Einstein
opportunity
(Three rules of work)
- Albert Einstein

The only sure way to avoid making Imagination is more important than
mistakes is to have no new ideas. knowledge
- Albert Einstein - Albert Einstein

Ideas must work through the brains The creation of a thousand forests is in one
and the arms of good and brave men, acorn.
or they are no better than dreams. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

What lies behind us and what lies Do that which you fear to do, and the fear
before us are small matters comapred will die.
to what lies within us - Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whether you believe you can, or The more you think, the more time you
whether you believe you can't, you're have.
absolutely right. - Henry Ford
- Henry Ford

Indecision is often worse than wrong In the creative state a man is taken out of
action. himself. He lets down as it were a bucket
- Gerald Ford into his subconscious, and draws up
something which is normally beyond his
reach. He mixes this thing with his normal
experiences and out of the mixture he
makes a work of art.
- E. M. Forster

Simplicity, carried to an extreme, Between stimulus and response is the

becomes elegant. freedom to choose.
- Jon Franklin - Viktor Frankyl

To take the difficulties, setback and Inventions have long since reached their
sorrows of life as a challenge which to limit, and I see no hope for further
overcome makes us stronger rather development.
than unjust punishment which should - Julius Sextus Frontinus
not happen to us requires faith and
courage
- Erich Fromm
Ideas are easy to come by; reduction to
practice is an arduous but
inspirationally rewarding matter.
- Buckminster Fuller
640K [memory] ought to be enough for
anybody
- 1981: Bill Gates
One does not discover new lands
without consenting to lose sight of the
shore for a very long time.
- Andr'e Gide
It's not where we stand but in what
direction we are moving.
- Goethe
No one ever achieved greatness by
playing it safe.
- Harry Gray
It is good to have an end to journey
toward; but it is the journey that
matters, in the end.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
You lose it if you talk about it.
- Ernest Hemingway
There is nothing permanent except
change (450 BC)
- Heraclitus
It's the job of a manager not to light
the fire of motivation, but to create an
environment to let each person's
personal spark of motivation blaze.
- Frederick Herzberg
It is not how smart you are; but how you
are smart
- Howard Gardner
I shut my eyes in order to see.
- Paul Gauguin
Persistance is the hard work that you do
after you are tired of doing the hard work
you already did.
- Newt Gingrich
Whatever you can do, or dream you can,
begin it. Boldness has genius, power and
magic in it.
- Goethe
To live is to have problems and to solve
problems is to grow intellectually
- J. P. Guilford
In a study of 2,036 scientists throughout
history, Simonton found that the most
respected produced not only more great
works, but also more "bad" ones. They
produced. Period.
- Doug Hall
If you obey all the rules, you miss all the
fun.
- Katherine Hepburn
One cannot step twice into the same river.
- Heraclitus
Man's mind stretched to a new idea, never
goes back to its original dimensions.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
To me, success can be achieved only
through repeated failure and
introspection. In fact, success
represents 1 percent of your work and
results from the 99 percent that is
called failure.
- Soichiro Honda
No amount of skillful invention can
replace the essential element of
imagination.
- Edward Hopper
We are continually faced by great
opportunities brilliantly disguised as
insoluble problems.
- Lee Iacocca
The art of becoming wise is the art of
knowing where to overlook.
- William James
Genius, in truth, means little more
than the faculty of perceiving in an
unhabitual way.
- William James
Men as well as rivers grow crooked by
following the path of least resistance.
- Thomas Jefferson
It's simple, you just take something
and do something to it, and then do
something else to it. Keep doing this,
and pretty soon you've got something.
- Jasper Johns
A man's errors are his portals of
discovery.
- James Joyce
Security is mostly a superstition. It
does not exist in nature, not do the
chiuldren of humankind as a whole
A ship in port is safe, but that's not what
ships are built for.
- Grace Hopper
The future has many names: For the weak,
it means the unattainable. For the fearful, it
means the unknown. For the courageous, it
means opportunity.
- Victor Hugo
What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.
- Dean William R. Inge
In the dim background of mind we know
what we ought to be doing but somehow we
cannot start.
- William James
Inventions become perfect by slow
improvement, and each step is itself an
invention.
- Joseph Jastrow
You cannot mandate productivity, you must
provide the tools to let people become their
best.
- Steve Jobs
Curiosity is one of the most permanent and
certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.
- Samuel Johnson
A person needs a little madness, or else they
never dare cut the rope and be free.
- Nikos Kazantzakis
When written in Chinese, the word crisis is
composed of two characters. One represents
danger, and the other represents
experience it. Avoiding danger is no
safer in the long run than outight
exposure. Life is either a daring
adventure, or it is nothing at all.
- Helen Keller
A lot of disappointed people have been
left standing on the street corner
waiting for the bus marked Perfection.
- Donald Kennedy
If you want to kill any idea in the
world, get a committee working on it.
- Charles Kettering
My interest is in the future, because
I'm going to spend the rest of my life
there.
- Charles Kettering
If the Creator had a purpose in
equipping us with a neck, he surely
would have meant for us to stick it out.
- Arthur Koestler
Any problem can be solved as long as it
is stated properly.
- Dr Edwin Land
A tree that can fill the span of a man's
arms grows from a downy tip; A
terrace nine storeys high rises from
hodfuls of earth; A journey of a
thousand miles starts from beneath
one's feet.
- Lao-Tzu
The idea for any cartoon (my
experience, anyway) is rarely
spontaneous. Good ideas usually evolve
out of pretty lame ones, and vice versa.
- Gary Larson
The US patent system adds the fuel of
interest to the fire of genius in the
opportunity.
- John F. Kennedy
The world hates change yet it is the only
thing that has brought progress
- Charles Kettering
Every time you tear a leaf off a calendar,
you present a new place for new ideas and
progress.
- Charles Kettering
Creative activity could be described as a
type of learning process where teacher and
pupil are located in the same individual.
- Arthur Koestler
The map is not the territory
- Alfred Korzbyski
An essential aspect of creativity is not being
afraid to fail.
- Dr. Edwin Land
Where do you get your ideas? has always
been the question I'm most often confronted
with. (Why do you get your ideas? is a close
second). I don't know where my ideas come
from....however...one key ingredient is
caffeine. I get a couple of cups of coffee into
me and things just start to happen.
- Gary Larson
The difference between the impossible and
possible lies in a person's determination.
- Tommy Lasorda
Creativity can solve almost any problem.
The creative act, the defeat of habit by
discovery and production of new and
useful things
- Abraham Lincoln
Perfection is not attainable. But if we
chase perfection, we can catch
excellence.
- Vince Lombardi
It seems that the creative faculty and
the critical faculty cannot exist
together in their highest perfection.
- Thomas Macaulay
Imagination grows by exercise, and
contrary to common belief, is more
powerful in the mature than in the
young.
- W. Somerset Maugham
One of the advantages of being
disorderly is that one is constantly
making exciting discoveries.
- A. A. Milne
The first word gives origin to the
second, the first and second to the
third, and the third to the fourth, and
so on. You cannot begin with the
second word...
- N. Scott Momaday
Obstacles are those frightful things you
see when you take your eyes off the
goal.
- Hannah More
It's not enought to visualise a positive
result; it's much better to plan how
you're going to get there.
- Shane Murphy
If I have seen further it is by standing
on the shoulders of giants.
- Isaac Newton
Ideas are elusive, slippery things. Best
originality, overcomes everything.
- George Lois
In creating, the only hard thing's to begin;
A grass-blade's no easier to make than an
oak.
- James Russell Lowell
I find television very educational. Every
time someone switches it on, I go into
another room and read a good book.
- Groucho Marx
The obvious is always least understood
- Prince Metternich
Making the simple complicated is
commonplace; making the complicated
simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
- Charles Mingus
I waited for the idea to consolidate, for the
grouping and composition of themes to
settle themselves in my brain. When I felt I
held enough cards I determined to pass to
action, and did so.
- Claude Monet
I never stop studying. There's always lots to
learn. When you stop learning, that's about
the end of you.
- John Morton-Finney
To be a man of knowledge one needs to be
light and fluid.
- Yaqui Mystic
One must still have chaos in oneself to be
able to give birth to a dancing star.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
And the day came when the risk to remain
to keep a pad of paper and a pencil at
your bedside, so you can stab them
during the night before they get away.
- Earl Nightingale
Life shrinks or expands in proportion
to one's courage.
- Anais Nin
Something is wrong if workers do not
look around each day, find things that
are tedious or boring, and then rewrite
the procedures. Even last month's
manual should be out of date
- Toyota: Taichi Ohno
Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is
ridiculous fiction.
- Pierre Pachet
The best way to get a good idea is to get
a lot of ideas
- Linus Pauling
It doesn't matter what product or
service you're offering; there is
unlimited ability to improve the quality
of anything.
- Tom Peters
I do not seek. I find.
(Je ne cherche pas; je trouve)
- Pablo Picasso
Creativity represents a miraculous
coming together of the uninhibited
energy of the child with its apparent
opposite and enemy, the sense of order
imposed on the disciplined adult
intelligence.
- Norman Podhoretz
tight in a bud was more painful than the
risk it took to blossom.
- Anais Nin
Open your mind up to things that have no
connection with the problem you're trying
to solve: subscribe to an unusual magazine;
spend a morning at an elementary school;
go to work two hours early; test drive an
exotic car; attend a city council
meeting;...try an Indonesian recipe.
- Roger von Oech
As in the piling up of hypothetical
alternatives, creative accidents follow the
law of probabilities - the more we fish, the
more likely we are to get a strike.
- Alex Osborn
Everything that can be invented has been
invented. (1899)
- Commissioner of Patents
The only joy in the world is to begin.
- Cesare Pavese
Computers are useless. They can only give
you answers.
- Pablo Picasso
It is the function of creative man to perceive
and to connect the seemingly unconnected.
- William Plommer
All we see or seem is but a dream within a
dream.
- Edgar Allen Poe
There are no secrets to success; don't
waste time looking for them. Success is
the result of perfection, hard work,
learning from failure, loyalty to those
for whom you work, and persistence.
- Colin Powell
The person who says it cannot be done
should not interrupt the person doing
it.
- Chinese Proverb
Being an expert is more than
understanding how a system is
supposed to work. Expertise is gained
by investigating why a system doesn't
work.
- Brian Redman
The only person who is educated is the
one who has learned how to learn ...
and change.
- Carl Rogers
Success is doing ordinary things
extraordinarily well
- Jim Rohn
Luck is what happens when
preparation meets opportunity.
- Darrell Royal
Be master of mind rather than
mastered by mind.
- Zen saying
The notes I handle no better than
many pianists, But the pauses between
the notes - ah, that is where the art
resides!
- Arthur Schnabel
The people who get on in this world are
the people who get up and look for the
circumstances they want, and, if they
can't find them, make them.
The real voyage of discovery consists not in
seeking new landscapes but in seeing with
new eyes.
- Marcel Proust
Teachers open the door, but you must enter
by yourself.
- Chinese Proverb
People learn more from observation that
they do from conversation.
- Will Rogers
Even if you are on the right track, you will
get run over if you just sit there.
- Will Rogers
Inspiration could be called inhaling the
memory of an act never experienced.
- Ned Rorem
The hardest thing to learn in life is which
bridge to cross and which to burn.
- David Russell
Neccesity is the mother of invention, it is
true -- but is father is creativity, and
knowledge is the midwife.
- Jonathan Schattke
A learning organisation is one that is
continually expanding its capacity to create
its future.
- Peter Senge
Few people think more than two or three
times a year. I've made an international
reputation for myself by thinking once or
twice a week
- George Bernard Shaw
Some men see things as they are and
say, why. I dream things that never
were and say, why not.
- George Bernard Shaw.
Look and you will find it - what is
unsought will go undetected.
- Sophocles
Doodling is the brooding of the mind.
- Saul Steinberg
Every exit is an entry somewhere else.
- Tom Stoppard
Foraging is collecting information;
being on the outlook and exploring
your environment for new ideas,
seeking inspiration through nature,
getting an education, developing your
abilities and talenbts.
- FRANK's Components for Creativity
and Success
To do two things at once is to do
neither.
- Publilius Syrus
A discovery is said to be an accident
meeting a prepared mind.
- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
Go - not knowing where.
Bring - not knowing what.
The path is long, the way unknown
- Russian Fairy Tale
- Goerge Bernard Shaw
Musical comedies aren't written, they are
re-written.
- Stephen Sondheim
The life of the creative man is lead, directed
and controlled by boredom. Avoiding
boredom is one of our most important
purposes.
- Saul Steinberg
There are no foolish questions and no man
becomes a fool until he has stopped asking
questions
- Charles Steinmetz
I have learned throughout my life as a
composer chiefly through my mistakes and
pursuits of false assumptions, not by my
exposure to founts of wisdom and
knowledge.
- Igor Stravinsky
In the beginner's mind there are many
possibilities, but in the expert's mind there
are few.
- Shunryu Suzuki
The eyes are not responsible when the mind
does the seeing.
- Publilius Syrus
Discovery consists of looking at the same
thing as everyone else and thinking
something different.
- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
If the going is easy, beware! You may be
going downhill
- Greg Taunt
Your questions indicate the depth of Our life is frittered away by detail...
your belief. Look at the depth of your Simplify, Simplify
questions. - Henry Thoreau
- John & Lyn St. Clair Thomas

We should be taught not to wait for Change is not merely necessary to life - IT
inspiration to start a thing. Action IS LIFE.
always generates inspiration. - Alvin Toffler
Inspiration seldom generates action.
- Frank Tibolt

The strongest of all warriors are these Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds
two - time and patience. discuss events. Small minds discuss people.
- Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy - Leadership ... with a human touch

A person with a new idea is a crank Aim at nothing and you will hit it every
until the idea succeeds. time
- Mark Twain - Unknown

If Columbus had turned back, no one The mind is like a parachure - it only works
would have blamed him. No one would when it is open.
have remembered him either. - Unknown
- Unknown

Aim at nothing and you will hit it every The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a
time. fire to be kindled
- Unknown - Unknown

The one who follows the crowd will If you aren't the lead dog, the view never
usually get no further than the crowd. changes.
The one who walks alone is likely to - Unknown
discover places no one has ever been
before.
- Unknown

An idea can turn to dust or magic, Well begun is half done.

depending on the talent that rubs - Unknown
against it.
- Unknown

I roamed the countryside searching for Originality is nothing but judicious

answers to things I did not understand. imitation.
Why shells existed on the tops of - Voltaire
mountains. How the various circles of
water form around the spot which has
been struck by a stone, and why a bird
sustains itself in the air. These
questions and other strange
phenomena engaged my thought
throughout my life.
- Leondardo da Vinci

The art of creation is older than the art Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
of killing. (spoken in 1927)
- Andrei Voznesensky - Warner Brother's H. M. Warner

I think there is a world market for Remove the word "problem" from your
maybe five computers. vocabulary and replace it with "challenge".
- Thomas Watson Life will suddenly become a lot more
interesting and enjoyable.
- Donna Watson

Attachment is the great fabricator of The essence of competitiveness is liberated

illusions; reality can be attained only when we make people believe that what
by someone who is detached. they think and do is important - and then
- Simone Weil get out of their way while they do it.
- CEO of General Electric: Jack Welch

Failure can be a stepping-stone to I am a writer who came from a sheltered

success - it's never too late. life. A sheltered life can be daring as well.
- Dr Ralph Wells For all serious daring starts from within.
- Eudora Welty

We think in generalities, but we live in The "silly question" is the first intimation
detail. of some totally new development.
- Alfred North Whitehead - Alfred North Whitehead

Every really new idea looks crazy at Do or do not, there is no try

first (Empire Strikes Back) - Yoda
- Alfred North Whitehead

Without deviation, progress is not

possible.
- Frank Zappa

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Updated on 30th June 1999