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Creativity/Innovation Quotes

137 Total

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

– Arthur Schopenhauer

Success is on the far side of failure.

– Thomas Watson Sr.

Some men look at things the way they are and ask why? I dream of things that are not and ask why not?

– Robert Kennedy

Slaying sacred cows makes great steaks.

– Dick Nicolose

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing.

– Thomas Huxley

Replace ‘either/or’ thinking with ‘plus’ thinking.

– Craig Hickman

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.

– Christopher Morley

Organization is the enemy of improvisation.

Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.

– Laurence J. Peter

Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe- you can’t take a taxi.

One of the greatest pains for human nature is the pain of a new idea.

– Walter Bagehot

One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.

– Randall Jarrell

Observe what is with undivided awareness.

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.

– Emile Charter

Nothing encourages creativity like the chance to fall flat on one’s face.

– James D. Finley

Nothing is ever as dangerous as having THE Answer.

New opinions are always suspected and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.

Just because something has always been done in a certain way is never a sufficient reason for continuing to do it that way.

– Clarence Birdseye

It’s not how many ideas you have, It’s how many you make happen.

It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date.

– Roger von Oech

It often happens that two schoolboys can solve difficulties in their work for one another better than their master can. When you took the problem to a master, as we all remember, he was very likely to tell you what you understood already, to add a great deal of information which you didn’t want and say nothing at all about the thing that was puzzling you.

It is much more fun to work in a creative, committed environment. The people who shared their ideas with me were excited, enthusiastic, and committed to their organizations with a loyalty, a pride, and a zest that were contagious.

– Barbara Glanz

It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes up to the top.

– Virginia Woolf

It is easier to behave your way into a new way of thinking than it is to think your way into a new way of behaving.

Invention is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.

Innovation is the process of turning ideas into manufacturable and marketable form.

– Watts Humprey

Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time… The wait is simply too long.

– Leonard Bernstein

Innovation – any new idea – by definition will not be accepted at first. It takes repeated attempts, endless demonstrations, monotonous rehearsals before innovation can be accepted and internalized by an organization. This requires “courageous patience.”

– Warren Bennis

In the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from the known, from the prison of past conditioning. Uncertainty is the fertile ground of creativity and freedom.

– Deepak Chopra

In the age of revolution you have to be able to imagine revolutionary alternatives to the status quo. If you can’t, you’ll be relegated to the swollen ranks of keyboard pounding automatons.

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