Creative Quotes

On this showing, the nature of the breakdowns of civilizations can be summed up in three points: a failure of creative power in the minority, an answering withdrawal of mimesis on the part of the majority, and a consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole. (Arnold J. Toynbee)
A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. View quote
Ayn Rand
I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension. View quote
Norman Mailer
The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. View quote
Carl Jung
Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort. View quote
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training. View quote
Anna Freud
Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it. View quote
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts. View quote
Henry Moore
The most valiant thing you can do as an artist is inspire someone else to be creative. View quote
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
One recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramatic potential. View quote
V. S. Pritchett
One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude. (Carl Sandburg)
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. View quote
Steve Jobs
In religions which have lost their creative spark, the gods eventually become no more than poetic motifs or ornaments for decorating human solitude and walls. View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
Being inexhaustible, life and nature are a constant stimulus for a creative mind. View quote
Hans Hofmann
Any kind of creative activity is likely to be stressful. The more anxiety, the more you feel that you are headed in the right direction. Easiness, relaxation, comfort - these are not conditions that usually accompany serious work. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies. View quote
Willa Cather
I received from my experience in Japan an incredible sense of respect for the art of creating, not just the creative product. We're all about the product. To me, the process was also an incredibly important aspect of the total form. View quote
Julie Taymor
If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play. View quote
John Cleese
But I really love music, and having a creative outlet is really the best thing you can do for yourself. View quote
Edie Brickell
Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism. View quote
Barry Goldwater
Creative ideas flourish best in a shop which preserves some spirit of fun. Nobody is in business for fun, but that does not mean there cannot be fun in business. (Leo Burnett)
Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Vision is the true creative rhythm. View quote
Robert Delaunay
Russia, France, Germany and China. They revere their writers. America is still a frontier country that almost shudders at the idea of creative expression. View quote
James A. Michener
The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Sociology extracts it. The writer loses Eden, writes to be read and comes to realize that he is answerable. View quote
Nadine Gordimer