390 QUOTES ABOUT CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION

2. "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

3. "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 man’s brow." —Charles Brower

4. "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

5. "My first encounter with creativity was at my fine and applied arts classes, then in creative writing, then it opened up fully and I realized creativity was as relevant to an engineer building machines and processes as an artiste creating memorable works and just as much to the teacher who has to mold the mind of pupils to be creative. There is indeed a wide scope for the common thread of creativity." —Kenneth Nwabudike Okafor

6. "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

7. "Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way." —William James

8. "You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club." —Jack London

9. "Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures." —Henry Ward Beecher

10. "Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will" —George Bernard Shaw

11. "Nothing is done. Everything in the world remains to be done or done over. The greatest picture is not yet painted, the greatest play isn’t written, the greatest poem is unsung. There isn’t 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

12. "The world is but a canvas to the imagination." —Henry David Thoreau

13. "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

14. "So you see, imagination needs moodling – long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering." —Brenda Uelan

15. "Creativity is… seeing something that doesn’t exist already. You need to find out how you can bring it into being and that way be a playmate with God" —Michele Shea

16. "The most potent muse of all is our own inner child" —Stephen Nachmanovitch

17. "As competition intensifies, the need for creative thinking increases." —Edward de Bono

18. "Listen to anyone with an original idea, no matter how absurd it may sound at first. If you put fences around people, you get sheep. Give people the room they need" —William McKnight, 3M President

19. "Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has had an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference" —Nolan Bushnell

20. "All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning" —Albert Camus

21. "Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths" —Walt Disney

22. "An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail" —Edwin H. Land

23. "To draw, you must close your eyes and sing” —Pablo Picasso

24. "A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral" —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

25. "The wastebasket is a writer’s best friend" —Isaac Bashevis Singer

26. "Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen" —Jonh Steinbeck

27. "If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced" —Vincent van Gogh

28. "Where observation is concerned, chance favours the prepared mind." —Louis Pasteur

29. "I shall become a master in this art only after a great deal of practice" —Erich Fromm

30. "I began by tinkering around with some old tunes I knew. Then, just to try something different, I set to putting some music to the rhythm that I used in jerking ice-cream sodas at the Poodle Dog. I fooled around with the tune more and more until at last, lo and behold, I had completed my first piece of finished music" —Duke Ellington

31. "Because of their courage, their lack of fear, they (creative people) are willing to make silly mistakes. The truly creative person is one who can think crazy; such a person knows full well that many of his great ideas will prove to be worthless. The creative person is flexible; he is able to change as the situation changes, to break habits, to face indecision and changes in conditions without undue stress. He is not threatened by the unexpected as rigid, inflexible people are" —Frank Goble

32. "Invention strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come from nothing.” —Sir Joshua Reynolds

33. "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." —Huxley, Thomas

34. "Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious…and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." —Walt Disney

35. "Creativity is contagious. Pass it on." —Albert Einstein

36. "The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done – men who are creative, inventive and discoverers." —Jean Piaget

37. "The creative person is willing to live with ambiguity. He doesn’t need problems solved immediately and can afford to wait for the right ideas." —Abe Tannenbaum

38. "An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.” —Victor

Hugo

39. "An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea." —Edward de Bono

40. "Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self." —Erich Fromm

41. "The human mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions." —Oliver Wendell Holmes

42. "It seems to be one of the paradoxes of creativity that in order to think originally, we must familiarize ourselves with the ideas of others." —George Kneller

43. "The highest prize we can receive for creative work is the joy of being creative. Creative effort spent for any other reason than the joy of being in that light filled space, love, god,

whatever we want to call it, is lacking in integrity" —Marianne Williamson

44. "We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own and other’s people’s models, learn to be ourselves and allow our natural channel to open.” —Shakti Gawain

45."When you are describing, a shape, or sound, or tint; Don’t state the matter plainly, But put it in a hint; And learn to look at all things, With a sort of mental squint." —Lewis Carroll

46. "Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game." —Goethe

47. "I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones." —John Cage

48. "Creativity is putting your imagination to work, and it's produced the most extraordinary results in human culture." —Sir Ken Robinson

49. "Some people use things; they destroy. You’re a creator, a builder." —Amelia Atwater-

Rhodes

50. "Originality is nothing but judicious imitation" —Voltaire

51. "You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have." —Maya Angelou

52. "By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired." —Nikos Kazantzakis

53. "Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you're passionate about something, then you're more willing to take risks." —Yo-Yo Ma

54. "One of my early mentors, poet David Wagoner, who divides the creative process into three phases – madman, poet and critic – once told me that you need to find your own magic to stay in the world of creative play." —Sonia Gernes

56. "A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on." —John F. Kennedy

57. "Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric." —Bertrand Russell

58. "Held in the palms of thousands of disgruntled people over the centuries have been ideas worth millions – if they only had taken the first step and then followed through." —Robert M. Hayes

59. "To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong." —Joseph Chilton Pierce

60. "The stone age didn’t end because they ran out of stones." —Unknown

61. "People put limitations on their creativity, believing they have to rely on what they know and what they have done." ―Bertrand Piccard

62. "Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem." ―Brian Aldiss

63. "Creativity is essential to particle physics, cosmology, and to mathematics, and to other fields of science, just as it is to its more widely acknowledged beneficiaries — the arts and humanities." ―Lisa Randall

64. "Creativity is how we cope with creation. While creation sometimes seems a bit un-graspable, or even pointless, creativity is always meaningful." ―Vik Muniz

65. "Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature." ―Eric Hoffer

66. I don't know that my schooling was conducive to wild ideas and creativity, but it gave me discipline, drive. They taught me how to think. I really know how to think." ―Lady Gaga

67. "You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have." ―Maya Angelou

68. "The inner fire is the most important thing mankind possesses." ―Edith Södergran

69. "The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination." ―Albert Einstein

70. "Truly creative people care a little about what they have done, and a lot about what they are doing. Their driving focus is the life force that surges in them now." —Alan Cohen

71. "An artist paints, dances, draws, writes, designs, or acts at the expanding edge of consciousness. We press into the unknown rather than the known. This makes life lovely and lively." —Julia Cameron

72. "Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it." —Salvador Dali

73. "Creative power, is that receptive attitude of expectancy which makes a mold into which the plastic and as yet undifferentiated substance can flow and take the desired form." —Thomas Troward

74. "Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything." —George Lois

75. "A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition." —Charles Caleb Colton

76. "Creativity is a drug I cannot live without" —Cecil B. DeMille

77."Creativity is the key to success in the future, and primary education is where teachers can bring creativity in children at that level." ―A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
78."It’s impossible to explain creativity. It's like asking a bird, 'How do you fly?' You just do." ―Eric Jerome Dickey

79."The heart and soul of the company is creativity and innovation." ―Bob Iger

80."And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." ―Sylvia Plath

81. "Creativity is a great motivator because it makes people interested in what they are doing. Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea. Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone. Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting." ―Edward de Bono
82. "Boredom always precedes a period of great creativity." ―Robert M. Pirsig
83. "Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people." ―Leo Burnett

84. "The comfort zone is the great enemy to creativity; moving beyond it necessitates intuition, which in turn configures new perspectives and conquers fears." ―Dan Stevens
85. "Educationists should build the capacities of the spirit of inquiry, creativity, entrepreneurial and moral leadership among students and become their role model." ―A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

86. "You see a child play, and it is so close to seeing an artist paint, for in play a child says things without uttering a word. You can see how he solves his problems. You can also see what's wrong. Young children, especially, have enormous creativity, and whatever's in them rises to the surface in free play." ―Erik Erikson

87. "Originality is the essence of true scholarship. Creativity is the soul of the true scholar." ―Nnamdi Azikiwe

88. "In my experience, poor people are the world's greatest entrepreneurs. Every day, they must innovate in order to survive. They remain poor because they do not have the opportunities to turn their creativity into sustainable income." ―Muhammad Yunus
89. "Creativity is not just for artists. It's for businesspeople looking for a new way to close a sale; it's for engineers trying to solve a problem; it's for parents who want their children to see the world in more than one way." ―Twyla Tharp
90. "But the person who scored well on an SAT will not necessarily be the best doctor or the best lawyer or the best businessman. These tests do not measure character, leadership, creativity, perseverance." ―William Julius Wilson

91. "Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is the result of good work habits." ―Twyla Tharp

92. "Living creatively is really important to maintain throughout your life. And living creatively doesn't mean only artistic creativity, although that's part of it. It means being yourself, not just complying with the wishes of other people." ―Matt Groening

93. "The idea flow from the human spirit is absolutely unlimited. All you have to do is tap into that well. I don't like to use the word efficiency. It's creativity. It's a belief that every person counts." ―Jack Welch

94. "Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected."―William Plomer

95. "Creativity takes courage" ―Henri Matisse

96. "You might not think that programmers are artists, but programming is an extremely creative profession. It's logic-based creativity." ―John Romero

97. "When I studied graphic design, I learned a valuable lesson: There's no perfect answer to the puzzle, and creativity is a renewable resource" ― Biz Stone

98. "In an era of parental paranoia, lawsuit mania and testing frenzy, we are failing to inspire our children's curiosity, creativity, and imagination. We are denying them opportunities to tinker, discover, and explore –in short, to play" ―Darell Hammond

99. “Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that's easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity." ―Charles Mingus

100. "I saw as a teacher how, if you take that spark of learning that those children have, and you ignite it, you can take a child from any background to a lifetime of creativity and accomplishment." ―Paul Wellstone

101. "Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous." ―Bill Moyers

102. "Creativity can release you from the limitations that the world has constructed around you; the everyday, mundane, 9-5 jail cell where everybody is waiting for the weekend to party so they can get outside of their head." ―Robert LaSardo

103. "Make an empty space in any corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it." ―Dee Hock

104. "Creativity is as important as literacy and numeracy, and I actually think people understand that creativity is important — they just don't understand what it is." ―Sir Ken Robinson

105. "Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door." —Coco Chanel

106. "Blogging is a great way to show your talents and interests to prospective employers, while adding an edge to your resume. If you blog consistently it shows your dedication, passions and creativity — all of which are key attributes employers look for in job candidates." ―Lauren Conrad

107. "Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm." ―Earl Nightingale

108. "A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something." ―Frank Capra

109. "I find human beings to be so complex and full of beauty. Creativity is our way to express and challenge and flow. So, all you humans, create and flow! I'll be over here thinking you are beautiful and creepy and freaky and wonderful!”―Angela Bettis

110. "Creativity and insight almost always involve an experience of acute pattern recognition: the eureka moment in which we perceive the interconnection between disparate concepts or ideas to reveal something new." ―Jason Silva

111. "Creativity is always a leap of faith. You're faced with a blank page, blank easel, or an empty stage." ―Julia Cameron

112. "Solitude is creativity's best friend, and solitude is refreshment for our souls." ―Naomi Judd

113. "Faith is almost the bottom line of creativity; it requires a leap of faith any time we undertake a creative endeavor, whether this is going to the easel, or the page, or onto the stage — or for that matter, in a homelier way, picking out the right fabric for the kitchen curtains, which is also a creative act." ―Julia Cameron
114. "I want to leverage the creativity of researchers across mathematics, statistics, data mining, computer science, biology, medicine, and the public at large.”―Tan Le

115. "Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.” ― Rita Mae Brown

116. "The biggest mistake you can make is assuming that creativity will hit you all at once and the muse will carry you to the end of the book on feather wings while 'Foster the People' plays gently in the background. Storytelling is work. Pleasurable work, usually, but it is work." ―Maggie Stiefvater

117. "Possessing a healthy imagination is a necessary ingredient for creativity.” ―Steve Vai

118. "In Israel, a land lacking in natural resources, we learned to appreciate our greatest national advantage: our minds. Through creativity and innovation, we transformed barren deserts into flourishing fields and pioneered new frontiers in science and technology."

― Shimon Peres

120. "Creativity is opportunity for created man to contribute, to add value to creation, enriching the work of a creative God." ―Kenneth Nwabudike Okafor

121. "Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them." —Alfred North Whitehead

122. "Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next." —Jonas Salk

123. "If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong." —Charles Kettering

124. "If you can dream it, you can do it." —Walt Disney

125. "Security is mostly a superstition. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." —Helen Keller

126. "You can't solve a problem on the same level that it was created. You have to rise above it to the next level." —Albert Einstein

127. "Do not fear mistakes. There are none." —Miles Davis

128. "The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect, but by the play instinct arising from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the object it loves." —Carl Jung

129. "There is only one thing stronger than all the armies of the world: and that is an idea whose time has come." —Victor Hugo

130. "If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think." —Clarence Darrow
131. "Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen." —John Steinbeck

132. "To accomplish great things we must dream as well as act." — Anatole France

133. "It is the essence of genius to make use of the simplest ideas."  —Charles Peguy

134. "There's no good idea that cannot be improved on." —Michael Eisner

135. "We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are." —Anais Nin

136. "Go where the silence is and say something." —Amy Goodman

137. "The best vision is insight." —Malcolm Forbes

138. "Genius is infinite painstaking." —Michelangelo

139. "Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen." —Leonardo da Vinci

140. "Neither a lofty degree of intelligence, nor imagination, nor both together, go to the making of genius. Love, Love, Love. That is the soul of genius." —Mozart

141. "Swipe from the best, then adapt." —Tom Peters

142. "Give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself." —Robert Louis Stevenson

143. "Whether or not you can observe a thing depends upon the theory you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed." —Albert Einstein

144. "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." —Goethe

145. "The greater the contrast, the greater the potential. Great energy only comes from a correspondingly great tension of opposites." —Carl Jung

146. "We don't know who discovered water, but we're certain it wasn't a fish." —John Culkin

147. "I will act as if what I do will make a difference." —William James

148. "There is no such thing as a long piece of work, except one that you dare not start." — Charles Baudelaire

149. "What is now proved was once only imagined." —William Blake

150. "Remember, a dead fish can float down a stream, but it takes a live one to swim upstream." —W.C. Fields

151. "99 percent of success is built on failure." —Charles Kettering

152. "The ultimate creative thinking technique is to think like God. If you're an atheist, pretend how God would do it." —Frank Lloyd Wright

153. "I start where the last man left off." —Thomas Edison

154. "Never confuse motion with action." —Ernest Hemingway

155. "The greatest invention in the world is the mind of a child." —Thomas Edison

156. "No matter how well you perform, there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy." —Sir Laurence Olivier

157. "You must do the thing you think you cannot do." —Eleanor Roosevelt

158. "The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away." —Linus Pauling

159. "Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought." —Albert Szent-Gyorgi

160. "A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock pile when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind."—Antoine Saint-Exupery

161. "Do not be satisfied with the stories that come before you. Unfold your own myth." —Rumi

162. "You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take." —Wayne Gretzky

163. "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few." —Shunryu Suzuki

164. "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." —General George Patton

165. "The man with a new idea is a crank – until the idea succeeds." —Mark Twain

166. "A problem well stated is a problem half solved." —Charles Kettering

167. "The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil." — Thomas Edison

168. "Don't be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps." —David Lloyd George

169. "The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development." —Alfred North Whitehead

170. "A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor." —Victor Hugo

171. "Money never starts an idea; it is the idea that starts the money." —William J. Cameron

172. "Systems die; instincts remain." —Oliver Wendell Holmes

173. "You will never find the time for anything. If you want time, you must make it." —Charles Burton

174. "If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing." —Marc Chagall

175. "One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive one." — Ralph Waldo Emerson

176. "The lightning spark of thought generated in the solitary mind awakens its likeness in another mind." —Thomas Carlyle

177. "I failed my way to success." —Thomas Edison

178. "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." —Margaret Mead

179. "The way to succeed is to double your failure rate." —Thomas Watson

180. "Innovation opportunities do not come with the tempest but with the rustling of the breeze." —Peter F. Drucker

181. "Sometimes you gotta create what you want to be part of."  —Geri Weitzman

182. "You can only be as good as you dare to be bad." —John Barrymore

183. "No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered." —Winston Churchill

184. "Conclusions arrived at through reasoning have very little or no influence in altering the course of our lives." —Carlos Casteneda

185. "After years of telling corporate citizens to 'trust the system,' many companies must relearn instead to trust their people — and encourage their people to use neglected creative capacities in order to tap the most potent economic stimulus of all: idea power." —Rosabeth Moss Kanter

186. "If the creator has a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely would have meant for us to stick it out." —Arthur Koestler

187. "If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself." —Rollo May

188. "Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have." —Emile Chartier

189. "There's always an element of chance and you must be willing to live with that element. If you insist on certainty, you will paralyze yourself." —John Paul Getty
190. "Almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are just produced." —Alfred North Whitehead

191. "Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found." —James Russell Lowell

192. "It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to." —Jean-Luc Godard

193. "Every act of creation is, first of all, an act of destruction." —Pablo Picasso

194. "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." — Groucho Marx

195. "Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way." —William James

196. "Vision is the art of seeing things invisible." —Jonathan Swift

197. "The best way to predict the future is to create it." —Alan Kay

198. "If you go to your grave without painting your masterpiece, it will not get painted. No one else can paint it." — Gordon MacKenzie

199. "Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most." —Fyodor Dostoevsky

200. "There is a vitality, a life force, that is translated to you into action, and because 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 will be lost." —Martha Graham

201. "Confusion is a word we have invented for an order that is not yet understood." — Henry Miller

202. "I refuse to be intimidated by reality anymore. What is reality? Nothing but a collective hunch."  —Lily Tomlin

203. "Now that we have met with paradox we have some hope of making progress." —Niels Bohr

204. "Microsoft is always two years away from failure." —Bill Gates

205. "We've reached the end of incrementalism. Only those companies that are capable of creating industry revolutions will prosper in the new economy. —Gary Hamel

206. "If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied." —Alfred Noble

207. "I've been doing a lot of abstract painting lately, extremely abstract. No brush, no paint, no canvas, I just think about it." —Steven Wright

208. "Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better." —John Updike

209. "I am looking for a lot of people who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done." —Henry Ford.

210 "You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can't get them across, your ideas won't get you anywhere." —Lee Iacocca

211. "I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones." —John Cage

212. "Nothing is stronger than habit." —Ovid

213. "If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got." —Albert Einstein

214. "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working." —Pablo Picasso

215. "They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”—Andy Warhol

216. "Necessity is the mother of invention." —Anonymous

217. "Minds are like parachutes; they work best when open.”— T. Dewar

218. "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”—George Bernard Shaw

219. "There are no old roads to new directions." —The Boston Consulting Group

220. "You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”—Andre Gid

221. "Innovation is anything, but business as usual." —Anonymous

222. "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." —Alan Kay

223. "If at first the idea is not absurd, then there will be no hope for it." —Albert Einstein

224. "The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards." —Arthur Koestler

225. "A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.” —A. von Szent-Gyorgyi

226. "Innovation is the ability to convert ideas into invoices." —L. Dunn

227. "Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises." —Demosthenes

228. "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference." —Robert Frost

229. "The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible." —A. Clarke

230. "The key to success is for you to make a habit throughout your life of doing the things you fear." —Vincent Van Gogh

231. "The impossible is often the untried." —J. Goodwin

232. "An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all." —Oscar Wilde

233. "Ideas are useless unless used." —Theodore Levitt

234. "It is not how many ideas you have. It’s how many you make happen." — Advertisement of Accenture

235. "The best ideas lose their owners and take on lives of their own. —Nolan Bushnell

236. "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

237. "Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.” —Theodore Levitt

238. "Invention strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come from nothing." —Sir Joshua Reynolds

239. "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

240. "Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way." — William James

241. "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

242."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 you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself." —Alan Alda

243. "Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.” —Leo Burnett

244. "Without freedom, there is no creation." —Jiddu Krishnamurti

245. "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 man’s brow." —Charles Brower

246. "Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn’t work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach." —Roger Von Oech

247. "I began by tinkering around with some old tunes I knew. Then, just to try something different, I set to putting some music to the rhythm that I used in jerking ice-cream sodas at the Poodle Dog. I fooled around with the tune more and more until at last, lo and behold, I had completed my first piece of finished music." —Duke Ellington

248. "Because of their courage, their lack of fear, they (creative people) are willing to make silly mistakes. The truly creative person is one who can think crazy; such a person knows full well that many of his great ideas will prove to be worthless. The creative person is flexible; he is able to change as the situation changes, to break habits, to face indecision and changes in conditions without undue stress. He is not threatened by the unexpected as rigid, inflexible people are." —Frank Goble

249. "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

250. "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

251."Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual." —Arthur Koestler

252. "The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done – men who are creative, inventive and discoverers." —Jean Piaget

253. "The creative person is willing to live with ambiguity. He doesn’t need problems solved immediately and can afford to wait for the right ideas." —Abe Tannenbaum

254. "An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come." — Victor Hugo

255. "Held in the palms of thousands of disgruntled people over the centuries have been ideas worth millions – if they only had taken the first step and then followed through." — Robert M. Hayes

256. "If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old." —Peter F. Drucker

257. "By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The non-existent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired." —Nikos Kazantzakis

258. "One of my early mentors, poet David Wagoner, who divides the creative process into three phases – madman, poet and critic – once told me that you need to find your own magic to stay in the world of creative play." —Sonia Gernes

259. "A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on." —John F. Kennedy

260. "Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric." —Bertrand Russell

261. "To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong." —Joseph Chilton Pierce

262. "Held in the palms of thousands of disgruntled people over the centuries have been ideas worth millions – if they only had taken the first step and then followed through.” — Robert M. Hayes

263. "Life is trying things to see if they work." —Ray Bradbury

264. "You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have." —Maya Angelou

265. "Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity." —Edwin H. Land

266. "Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." —Scott Adams

267. "A truly creative person rids him or herself of all self-imposed limitations.” —Gerald G. Jampolsky

268. "Don’t ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." —Howard Thurman

269. "It seems to be one of the paradoxes of creativity that in order to think originally, we must familiarize ourselves with the ideas of others." —George Kneller

270. "Some people use things; they destroy. You’re a creator, a builder." —Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

271. "Creative power, is that receptive attitude of expectancy which makes a mold into which the plastic and as yet undifferentiated substance can flow and take the desired form.” —Thomas Troward

272. "Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.” —George Lois

273. "A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition.” —Charles Caleb Colton

274. "Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self.” —Erich Fromm

275. "Truly creative people care a little about what they have done, and a lot about what they are doing. Their driving focus is the life force that surges in them now.” —Alan Cohen

276. "An artist paints, dances, draws, writes, designs, or acts at the expanding edge of consciousness. We press into the unknown rather than the known. This makes life lovely and lively." —Julia Cameron

277. "You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star." — Friedrich Nietzsche

278. "When all think alike, then no one is thinking."— Walter Lippman
279. "Capital isn't so important in business. Experience isn't so important. You can get both these things. What is important is ideas. If you have ideas, you have the main asset you need, and there isn't any limit to what you can do with your business and your life."— Harvey Firestone

280. "Great is the human who has not lost his childlike heart."— Mencius (Meng-Tse), 4th century BCE

281. "Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard." —Anne Sexton

282. "Creativity, as has been said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know. Hence, to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted." —George Kneller

283. "It isn't the incompetent who destroy an organization. The incompetent never get in a position to destroy it. It is those who achieved something and want to rest upon their achievements who are forever clogging things up."—F. M. Young

284. "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

285. "We all operate in two contrasting modes, which might be called open and closed. The open mode is more relaxed, more receptive, more exploratory, more democratic, more playful and more humorous. The closed mode is the tighter, more rigid, more hierarchical, more tunnel-visioned. Most people, unfortunately spend most of their time in the closed mode. Not that the closed mode cannot be helpful. If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time for considering alternative strategies. When you charge the enemy machine—gun post, don't waste energy trying to see the funny side of it. Do it in the "closed" mode. But the moment the action is over, try to return to the "open" mode—to open your mind again to all the feedback from our action that enables us to tell whether the action has been successful, or whether further action is need to improve on what we have done. In other words, we must return to the open mode, because in that mode we are the most aware, most receptive, most creative, and therefore at our most intelligent." —John Cleese

287. "Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work." —Chuck Close

288. "The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas." —Linus Pauling

289. "Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought." —Albert von Szent-Gyorgy

290. "To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science." —Albert Einstein

291. “Without the playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable."—Carl Jung
292. "When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: “Only stand out of my light.” Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light."—John W. Gardner

293. "To be creative you have to contribute something different from what you've done before. Your results need not be original to the world; few results truly meet that criterion. In fact, most results are built on the work of others." —Lynne C. Levesque

294. "We shall not cease from exploration, and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." —T. S. Eliot
295. "Once we rid ourselves of traditional thinking we can get on with creating the future." —James Bertrand

296. "There's a way to do it better—find it." —Thomas Edison

297. "The essential part of creativity is not being afraid to fail." —Edwin H. Land

298. "Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual." — Arthur Koestler
299. "Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found." —James Russell Lowell

300. "The things we fear most in organizations—fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances—re the primary sources of creativity." —Margaret J. Wheatley

301. "Too much of our work amounts to the drudgery of arranging means toward ends, mechanically placing the right foot in front of the left and the left in front of the right, moving down narrow corridors toward narrow goals. Play widens the halls. Work will always be with us, and many works are worthy. But the worthiest works of all often reflect an artful creativity that looks more like play than work." —James Ogilvy

302. "The achievement of excellence can only occur if the organization promotes a culture of creative dissatisfaction." —Lawrence Miller

303. "When the 'weaker' of the two brains (right and left) is stimulated and encouraged to work in cooperation with the stronger side, the end result is a great increase in overall ability and ... often five to ten times more effectiveness." —Robert Ornstein

304. "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

305. “The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away." — Linus Pauling

306. "The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions." —Anthony Jay

307. "Success is on the far side of failure." — Thomas Watson Sr.

308. "You don't understand anything unless you understand there are at least 3 ways." — M. Minsky

309. "To have a great idea, have a lot of them." — Thomas Edison

310. "Companies have to nurture [creativity and motivation]—and have to do it by building a compassionate yet performance—driven corporate culture. In the knowledge economy the traditional soft people side of our business has become the new hard side." —Gay Mitchell

311. "That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of our time." —John Stuart Mill

312. "An inventor is simply a person who doesn't take his education too seriously. You see, from the time a person is six years old until he graduates from college he has to take three or four examinations a year. If he flunks once, he is out. But an inventor is almost always failing. He tries and fails maybe a thousand times. It he succeeds once then he's in. These two things are diametrically opposite. We often say that the biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work." —Charles Kettering

313. "All human development, no matter what form it takes, must be outside the rules; otherwise we would never have anything new." —Charles Kettering
314. "Anyone can look for fashion in a boutique or history in a museum. The creative explorer looks for history in a hardware store and fashion in an airport." —Robert Wieder

315. "He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist." —Ralph Waldo Emerson

316. "Discoveries are often made by not following instructions, by going off the main road, by trying the untried." —Frank Tyger

317. "The law of floatation was not discovered by contemplating the sinking of things, but by contemplating the floating of things which floated naturally, and then intelligently asking why they did so." —Thomas Troward

318. "If you do not the expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail." —Heraclitus

319. "The organizations of the future will increasingly depend on the creativity of their members to survive. Great Groups offer a new model in which the leader is an equal among Titans. In a truly creative collaboration, work is pleasure, and the only rules and procedures are those that advance the common cause." —Warren Bennis

320. "Genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration." —Thomas Edison

321. "The business world sees a measurable and growing intelligence gap — with need for intellectual expertise constantly expanding. Available talent is decreasing even though the population is increasing. Being bombarded with information – be it in Nintendo or shogi– and being able to process it, find patterns etc., is a vital skill. One way to increase this talent potential is through games." —Leif Edvinson

322. "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." —Howard Aiken

323. "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

324. "In every work of genius, we recognize our once rejected thoughts." —Ralph Waldo Emerson

325. "How we spend our days is how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and with that one, is what we are doing." —Annie Dillard

326. "Innovation is the process of turning ideas into manufacturable and marketable form." —Watts Humprey

327. "The innovation point is the pivotal moment when talented and motivated people seek the opportunity to act on their ideas and dreams." —W. Arthur Porter

328. "Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service. It is capable of being presented as a discipline, capable of being learned, capable of being practiced. Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation, the changes and their symptoms that indicate opportunities for successful innovation. And they need to know and to apply the principles of successful innovation." —Peter F. Drucker

329. "Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions" —Albert Einstein

330. "I roamed the countryside searching for the answers to things I did not understand. Why shells existed on the tops of mountains along with the imprints of coral and plant and seaweed usually found in the sea. Why the thunder lasts a longer time than that which causes it and why immediately on its creation the lightening becomes visible to the eye while thunder requires time to travel. 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." —Leonardo da Vinci

331. "Slaying sacred cows makes great steaks." —Dick Nicolose
332. "In the modern world of business it is useless to be a creative original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. Management cannot be expected to recognize a good idea unless it is presented to them by a good salesman." — David M. Ogilvy

333. "Innovation is fostered by information gathered from new connections; from insights gained by journeys into other disciplines or places; from active, collegial networks and fluid, open boundaries. Innovation arises from ongoing circles of exchange, where information is not just accumulated or stored, but created. Knowledge is generated anew from connections that weren't there before." — Margaret J. Wheatley

334. "Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys." —Sam Walton

335. "A person might be able to play without being creative, but he sure can't be creative without playing." —Kurt Hanks and Jay Parry

336. "The achievement of excellence can occur only if the organization promotes a culture of creative dissatisfaction." —Lawrence Miller

337. "Replace either/or thinking with plus thinking." —Craig Hickman

338. "[I]in 1913, the first assembly line was implemented at Ford Motor Company. The process grew like a vine and eventually spread to all phases of the manufacture of Ford cars, and then through the entire world of heavy industry. There can be no doubt that a powerful revolution occurred at Highland Park—but it was not the assembly line itself that provided the power. Rather, it was the creation of an atmosphere in which improvement was the real product: a better, cheaper, Model T followed naturally. Every man on the payroll was invited to contribute ideas, and the good ones were implemented without delay." —Douglas Brinkley

339. "History can’t give attention to what’s been lost, hidden, or deliberately buried; it is mostly a telling of success, not the partial failures that enabled success." —Scott Berkun

340. "Imagination is more important than knowledge." —Albert Einstein

341. "Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything." —George Lois

342. "If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original." — Sir Ken Robinson

343. "The joy is in creating, not maintaining." —Vince Lombardi
344. "Nothing is so embarrassing as watching someone do something that you said could not be done." —Sam Ewing

345. "Other things being equal, it is the person who can lift his work up to the plane of the intuitional and inspiration who achieves greatness, both in his work and in his career."— Stanwood Cobb, The Importance of Creativity
346. "We proceed by doubt, by trial and error, by resisting the impulse to lunge after certainty." —William Deresiewicz

347. "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

348. "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 man’s brow." —Charles Brower

349. "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

350. "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

351. "Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way." — William James
352. "Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun." —Mary Lou Cook
353. "You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club." —Jack London

354. "Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures." —Henry Ward Beecher

355. "Nothing is done. Everything in the world remains to be done or done over. The greatest picture is not yet painted, the greatest play isn’t written, the greatest poem is unsung. There isn’t 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

356. "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

356. "So you see, imagination needs moodling – long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering."— Brenda Ueland

357. "If you put fences around people, you get sheep. Give people the room they need."— William McKnight, 3M President

358. "Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has had an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference."— Nolan Bushnell

359. "All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning."— Albert Camus

360. "You write your first draft with your heart and you re-write with your head. The first key to writing is to write, not to think."—Sean Connery, Finding Forrester

361. "Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious... and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." —Walt Disney

362. "A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral." —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

363. "The wastebasket is a writer’s best friend."—Isaac Bashevis Singer

364. "If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced." —Vincent van Gogh

365. "Where observation is concerned, chance favors the prepared mind." —Louis Pasteur

366. "I shall become a master in this art only after a great deal of practice." —Erich Fromm

368. "Because of their courage, their lack of fear, they (creative people) are willing to make silly mistakes. The truly creative person is one who can think crazy; such a person knows full well that many of his great ideas will prove to be worth less. The creative person is flexible; he is able to change as the situation changes, to break habits , to face indecision and changes in conditions without undue stress. He is not threatened by the unexpected as rigid, inflexible people are." —Frank Goble

369. "Invention strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come from nothing." —Sir Joshua Reynolds

370. "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

371. "Creative power, is that receptive attitude of expectancy which makes a mold into which the plastic and as yet undifferentiated substance can flow and take the desired form." —Thomas Troward

372. "The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done – men who are creative, inventive and discoverers." —Jean Piaget

373. "The creative person is willing to live with ambiguity. He doesn’t need problems solved immediately and can afford to wait for the right ideas." —Abe Tannenbaum

374. "An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come." —Victor Hugo

375. "Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self." —Erich Fromm

376. "It seems to be one of the paradoxes of creativity that in order to think originally, we must familiarize ourselves with the ideas of others." —George Kneller

377. "We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own and other’s people’s models, learn to be ourselves and allow our natural channel to open." —Shakti Gawain

378. "When you are describing, A shape, or sound, or tint; Don’t state the matter plainly, But put it in a hint; And learn to look at all things, With a sort of mental squin." —Lewis Carroll

379. "Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game." —Goethe

380. "I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones."—John Cage

381. "Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do." —Leonardo da Vinci
382."By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The non-existent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired." —Nikos Kazantzakis

383."Truly creative people care a little about what they have done, and a lot about what they are doing. Their driving focus is the life force that surges in them now."—Alan Cohen

384. "A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition." —Charles Caleb Colton

385. "You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not’? " – George Bernard Shaw

386. "Inspiration comes and goes, creativity is the result of practice." —Phil Cousineau

387. "Creativity is a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual." —Arthur Koestler

388. "To copy the truth can be a good thing, but to invent the truth is better, much better." —Giuseppe Verdi

389. "Creativity is essentially a lonely art. An even lonelier struggle. To some a blessing. To others a curse. It is in reality the ability to reach inside yourself and drag forth from your very soul an idea." —Lou Dorfsman

390. "Creativity is intelligence having fun." —Albert Einstein

Lead image source: Buzzfeed.com.