Theme
Creativity
Imagination, making art, and where ideas come from.
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Verified quotes about creativity
Each is traced to a real source and correctly credited. ✓ Free to use = public domain, cleared for commercial reuse. Open one for a paste-ready credit line and its reuse status.
“A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery”
“A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself”
“All art is propaganda”
“An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way”
“Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand”
“Art, Like Morality, Consists of Drawing the Line Somewhere”
“Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born”
“Don't Bend; Don't Water It Down; Don't Try to Make It Logical; Don't Edit Your Own Soul According to the Fashion”
“Drama is life with the dull bits cut out”
“Every artist was first an amateur”
“Fashion is always a reflection of the times, but it is forgotten if it is foolish”
“Feet, what do I need them for if I have wings to fly?”
“From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it”
“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration”
“Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration”
“Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort”
“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter”
“Humor Can Be Dissected, as a Frog Can, But the Thing Dies in the Process”
“I believe talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it”
“I can't understand how anyone can write without rewriting everything over and over again”
“I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success...Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything”
“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way”
“I have never thrown an illegal pitch. The trouble is some of my pitches were never seen by this generation until I came along”
“If a book is well written, I always find it too short”
“If I Could Just Make Them Up On the Spot, I'd Be Famous”
“If you absolutely can't tolerate critics, then don't do anything new or interesting”
“If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence so machines can learn, that is worth 10 Microsofts”
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe”
“Imagination is more important than knowledge”
“In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different”
“Invention does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos”
“It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing”
“Just give them two and two and let them add it up”
“Make war a mere contest of machines without men and without loss of life”
“Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art”
“Myths are public dreams; dreams are private myths”
“Nothing is ugly as long as it is alive”
“Our homes are our prisons; let us find freedom in their decoration”
“Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen”
“Real artists ship”
“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable”
“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—'tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning”
“The power of imagination makes us infinite”
“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive”
“The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless”
“There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm themselves at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke coming from the chimney”
“There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit”
“They Haven't Done Anything to My Book. It's Right There on the Shelf”
“This world is but canvas to our imaginations”
“We go to openings of envelopes”
“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry”
“What is now proved was once only imagined”
“Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast”
“Without music, life would be a mistake”
“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality”
“Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down”
“You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say”
“A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes”
“At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”
“Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches”
“England and America are two countries separated by a common language”
“Fashion is architecture. It is a matter of proportions”
“God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things”
“Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it”
“Hell, there are no rules here. We're trying to accomplish something”
“I do not seek. I find”
“I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing — that it was all started by a mouse”
“I restore myself when I'm alone. A career is born in public — talent in privacy”
“I wonder what chairs think about all day: 'Oh, here comes another asshole.'”
“If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all”
“If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door”
“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it”
“If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced”
“Imagination rules the world”
“In dreams begins responsibility”
“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower”
“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working”
“It Is the Best Play I Ever Slept Through”
“Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything”
“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination”
“She Runs the Gamut of Human Emotion from A to B”
“The best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes”
“The dry martini is the only American invention as perfect as a sonnet”
“The first draft of anything is shit”
“What Is Written Without Effort Is In General Read Without Pleasure”
“Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art”
“You Are Only Interested in Art and I Am Only Interested in Money”
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Don’t get caught out
Commonly shared about creativity — but misattributed
Popular creativity lines that get pinned on the wrong name. If you use one, credit it correctly.
“There Was a Young Lady Named Bright Whose Speed Was Far Faster Than Light”
ReallyA. H. Reginald Buller · not Albert Einstein
“The Telegraph is Like a Very, Very Long Cat (or Dog)”
ReallyUnknown · not Albert Einstein
“If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate”
ReallyUnknown · not Richard Feynman
“Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings”
ReallyUnknown · not Richard Feynman
“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep”
ReallyScott Adams · not Douglas Adams
“I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach, but that would be boasting”
ReallyLewis Thomas · not Douglas Adams
“Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead”
ReallyGene Fowler · not Douglas Adams
“There Are Three Rules for the Writing of a Novel”
ReallyW. Somerset Maugham · not Oscar Wilde
“An Exclamation Point Is Like Laughing at Your Own Joke”
ReallyF. Scott Fitzgerald · not Mark Twain
“I Think that I Shall Never See a Billboard Lovely as a Tree”
ReallyOgden Nash · not Confucius
“Briefest Correspondence: Question Mark? Exclamation Mark!”
ReallyAnonymous · not Oscar Wilde
“I have nothing to declare except my genius”
ReallyUnknown · not Oscar Wilde
“But, said Alice, if the world has absolutely no sense, who's stopping us from inventing one?”
ReallyUnknown · not Lewis Carroll
“Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire”
ReallyUnknown · not Robert Frost
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”
ReallyMuriel Strode · not Robert Frost
“Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality”
ReallyBenjamin De Casseres · not Lewis Carroll
“Act One: Get Character Up a Tree. Act Two: Throw Rocks. Act Three: Get Character Down”
ReallyAnonymous · not Vladimir Nabokov
“All Creative-Writing Programs Ought to be Abolished by Law”
ReallyJohn Barth · not Kay Boyle