20 Quotes about Creativity and

Innovation
1. There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource
of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be
forever repeating the same patterns. Edward de Bono
2. There is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if
you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be
lost. Martha Graham
3. Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.
Theodore Levitt
4. A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be
stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right
mans brow. Charles Brower
5. When we engage in what we are naturally suited to do, our work takes
on the quality of play and it is play that stimulates creativity. Linda
Naiman
6. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to
leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.
What youll discover will be wonderful. What youll discover is yourself.
Alan Alda
7. It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to
be always right by having no ideas at all. Edward de Bono
8. A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort
becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form
merely . . . but by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter
enters into his nature and can then draw him at every attitude . . .
Ralph Waldo Emerson
9. Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an
unhabitual way. William James

10. The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know

about all kinds of things- ancient history, nineteenth century mathematics,
current manufacturing techniques, hog futures. Because he never knows
when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may
happen six minutes later, or six months, or six years. But he has faith that
it will happen. Carl Ally
11. Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking
rules, making mistakes, and having fun. Mary Lou Cook
12. You cant wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.
Jack London
13. Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature
into his pictures. Henry Ward Beecher
14. The key question isnt What fosters creativity? But it is why in
Gods name isnt everyone creative? Where was the human potential lost?
How was it crippled? I think therefore a good question might be not why
do people create? But why do people not create or innovate? We have got
to abandon that sense of amazement in the face of creativity, as if it were a
miracle if anybody created anything. Abraham Maslow
15. Nothing is done. Everything in the world remains to be done or done
over. The greatest picture is not yet painted, the greatest play isnt written,
the greatest poem is unsung. There isnt in all the world a perfect railroad,
nor a good government, nor a sound law. Physics, mathematics, and
especially the most advanced and exact of the sciences are being
fundamentally revised. . . Psychology, economics, and sociology are
awaiting a Darwin, whose work in turn is awaiting an Einstein.
Lincoln Steffens
16. The world is but a canvas to the imagination. Henry David
Thoreau
17. We have come to think of art and work as incompatible, or at least
independent categories and have for the first time in history created an
industry without art. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

18. So you see, imagination needs moodling long, inefficient, happy

idling, dawdling and puttering. Brenda Ueland
19. Creativity is... seeing something that doesnt exist already. You need
to find out how you can bring it into being and that way be a playmate with
God. Michele Shea
20. The most potent muse of all is our own inner child. Stephen
Nachmanovitch