CREATIVITY / DISCOVERY / INNOVATION

Related States & Conditions | Syntonic | Dystonic

Where there is creating, there is progress. Where there is no creating, there is no progress. Know the nature of creating. Where there is joy, there is creating. Know the nature of joy.
Chandogya Upanishad
c. 1400-c. 800 BCE, Hindu Sacred Text
The Upanishads , Juan Mascaro, tr., 1965

Only those who are able to relax can create, and then ideas reach the mind like lightning.
Cicero
106-43 BCE, Roman Orator, Statesman, Essayist

Do not follow the path. Go where there is no path and begin the trail.
Ashanti (Ghana) Saying

It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new one.
Niccolo Machiavelli
1469-1527, Italian Statesman, Historian, Political Philosopher

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.
Francis Bacon
1561-1626, English Philosopher, Essayist, Politician
Of Innovations

There are seasons, in human affairs, of inward and outward revolution, when new depths seem to be broken up in the soul, when new wants are unfolded in multitudes, and a new and undefined good is thirsted for. These are periods when … to dare is the highest wisdom.
William Ellery Channing
1789-1842, American Cleric

We must forget what is behind. If we cease to originate, we are lost. We can only keep what we have, by new activity.
Channing

The man is most original who can adapt from the greatest number of sources.
Thomas Carlyle
1795-1881, Scottish Historian, Biographer, Critic, Essayist

The seeds of great discoveries are constantly floating around, but they only take root in minds well prepared to receive them.
Joseph Henry
1797-1878, American Physicist

In beginnings, worlds are created. In creativity, meanings are formed.
Anonymous

The soul looketh steadily forwards, creating a new world before her, leaving worlds behind her.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist, Philosopher

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think new and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves.
Abraham Lincoln
1809-1865, 16th US President
Message to Congress, 1862 December 1

There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness.
Henry David Thoreau
1817-1862, American Essayist, Writer, Naturalist

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
Herman Melville
1819-1891, American Writer, Poet

Creating – that is the great salvation from suffering and life's alleviation. But for the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed, and much transformation.
Nietzsche
1844-1900, German Philosopher, Critic, Poet
Thus Spake Zarathustra

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
Thomas Edison
1847-1931, American Inventor, Industrialist

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
1847-1916, British Judge, Metaphysician, Writer
The Creative Process in the Individual

It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover.
Henri Poincare
1854-1912, French Mathematician

Do a common thing in an uncommon way.
Booker T. Washington
1856-1915, African-American Educator, Reformer
Daily Resolves

Originality begins in our reaction to the necessary events of life, to things that come up hard against us … If you are destined to do anything original there is some germ of it growing in you now, and you first need to discover and cherish that.
Charles Horton Cooley
1864-1929, American Sociologist
Life and the Student

Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.
Beatrix Potter
1866-1943, English Children's Writer, Illustrator

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.
John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
1874-1960, American Industrialist, Philanthropist

The world begins to exist when the individual discovers it.
Carl Jung
1875-1961, Swiss Psychologist, Theorist
Psychological Reflections , Jolande Jacobi & R. F. Hull, eds., 1953

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.
Jung

The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.
Albert Einstein
1879-1955, German-American Mathematical Physicist, 1921 Nobel Laureate

The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why.
Einstein
in Forbes , 1974 September 15

In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences, and out of this mixture he makes a work of art.
E. M. Forster
1879-1970, English Writer, Essayist, Literary Critic

One of the advantages to being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.
A. A. Milne
1882-1956, English Writer, Dramatist, Poet

In order to create there must be a dynamic force. And what force is greater than love?
Igor Stravinsky
1882-1971, Russian Composer, Conductor

Creative life is characterized by spontaneous mutability; it brings forth unknown issues, impossible to preconceive.
D. H. Lawrence
1885-1930, English Writer, Poet, Critic
Selected Essays

It is the unquestioning acceptance of the already existing that keeps people from being creative.
Anonymous

Create or perish is the eternal mandate of nature. Be constructive or become frustrated, is an equal demand. You cannot escape the conclusion that whatever this thing is which is seeking expression through everything, it can find satisfactory outlet only through constructive and life-giving creativeness.
Ernest Holmes
1887-1960, American Metaphysician, Founder of Religious Science
This Thing Called You , 1948

To create is to think more efficiently.
Pierre Reverdy
1889-1960, French Writer
Le livre de mon Bord

Creation is the movement of the internal towards the external and not a movement of the external on the surface.
Reverdy
in Andre Breton, Surrealism & Painting , 1972

When the creative urge seizes one – at least, such is my experience – one becomes creative in all directions at once.
Henry Miller
1891-1980, American Writer
The Books in My Life

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody else has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
1893-1986, Hungarian/American Biochemist, 1937 Nobel Laureate

A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.
Szent-Gyorgyi

All … of us are merely repeating what others have thought, though many have made their own discoveries by some thinking of their own. By "original minds" I mean the thinkers who broke unknown grounds for human thought, whose thinking soared to heights where others had not been before.
Lin Yutang
1895-1976, Chinese Writer, Dramatist, Translator
From Pagan to Christian

Creative work carries with it a form of intense love which borders on mania before it can become a success.
Lin
The Importance of Understanding

Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.
Anna Freud
1895-1982, Austrian/British Psychoanalyst, Writer

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
C. S. Lewis
1898-1963, Irish/English Academic, Writer, Critic

The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented. It was man's ability to invent which has made society what it is.
Dennis Gabor
1900-1979, English Physicist
Inventing the Future

Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape destinies and societies; but the compelling force of all times has been the force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the roots of the human spirit.
Ansel Adams
1902-1984, American Photographer, Conservationist

The richest source of creation is feeling, followed by a vision of its meaning.
Anaïs Nin
1903-1977, French/American Writer

Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
Arthur Koestler
1905-1983, Hungarian/British Philosopher
Drinkers of Infinity , 1967

The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.
Koestler

The most damaging phrase in the language is: "It's always been done that way."
Grace Murray Hopper
1906-1922, American Militarist, Mathematician

Only the flexibly creative person can really manage the future, only the one who can face novelty with confidence and without fear.
Abraham Maslow
1908-1970, American Psychologist, Educator

All men are creative, but few are artists.
Paul Goodman
1911-1972, American Writer
Growing Up Absurd , 1960

Creativity requires the freedom to consider "unthinkable" alternatives, to doubt the worth of cherished practices. Every organization, every society is under the spell of assumptions so familiar that they are never questioned – least of all by those most intimately involved.
John W. Gardner
1912-2002, American Bureaucrat
in No Easy Victories , Helen Rowan, ed.

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.
Gardner

When you've filled yourself with a particular problem … you have a great desire to have some clarity in it. You go through this long, hard period of filling yourself up with as much information as you can. You just sort of feel it rumbling around inside of you, not particularly at a conscious level. Then … you begin to feel a solution, a resolution, bubbling up to your consciousness. At the same time you begin to get very excited, tremendously elated – pervaded by a fantastic sense of joy.
Robert R. Wilson
1914-2000, American Physicist

The great obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
Daniel J. Boorstin
1914-2004, American Historian

Everyone's got to be different. You can't copy anybody and end up with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling. And without feeling, whatever you do amounts to nothing.
Billie Holiday
1915-1959, African-American Jazz Singer
Lady Sings the Blues , 1956

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
1918-, American Art Director

Curiosity is the key to creativity.
Akio Morito
1920-1999, Japanese Industrialist

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
1922-, American Architect

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
Joseph Pearce
1926-, American Writer

I've always had this idea from the day I started to play music: that not only is it alive, but that it's endless and has no ego in it. There's something about creativity that every human being gets an equal share.
Ornette Coleman
1930-, African-American Saxophonist

This is one of the glories of man, the inventiveness of the human mind and the human spirit: whenever life doesn't seem to give an answer, we create one.
Lorraine Hansberry
1930-1965, African-American Dramatist, Civil Rights Activist

Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy, the sense of order imposed on … the disciplined adult intelligence.
Norman Podhoretz
1930-, American Critic
in Playboy , 1968

It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts.
Boris Yeltsin
1931-, Russian President

Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.
George Lois
1931-, American Art Director
The Art of Advertising , 1977

The creative process is also the most terrifying part because you don't know exactly what's going to happen or where it is going to lead. You don't know what new dangers and challenges you'll find. It takes an enormous amount of internal security to begin with the spirit of adventure, discovery, and creativity. Without doubt, you have to leave the comfort zone of base camp and confront an entirely new and unknown wilderness.
Stephen Covey
1932-, American Management Educator, Writer
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People , 1989

Creative experiences can be produced regularly … it requires enormous personal security and openness and a spirit of adventure.
Covey

Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.
Edward de Bono
1933-, British Physician, Writer

Be brave enough to live life creatively. 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. You can't get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you're doing. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself.
Alan Alda
1936-, American Actor, Director, Screen Writer

The things we fear most in organization – fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances – are the primary sources of creativity.
Margaret Wheatley
1941-, American Management Educator

Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.
Tom Peters
1942-, American Management Consultant

Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.
Rita Mae Brown
1944-, American Writer, Poet, Lesbian-Feminist
Starting From Scratch

The art of creating is as integral a part of life as going to the lavatory.
David Bowie
1947-, British Rock Singer

The current cultural split lies not between scientists and everyone else but between those who innovate or create and those who do not. Innovators and the process of innovation must become the focus of study. Innovation is the lifeblood of cultural change.
Robert R. Bernstein
1953-, American Writer

Life is a continuous exercise in creative problem solving.
Bill Gates
1955-, American Entrepreneur

It is our inexperience and ignorance that can make the creative process seem as if it is an outcome of magical operations … But, in fact, creating is a skill that can be learned and developed. Like any skill, you learn by practice and hands-on experience. You can learn to create by creating.
Robert Fritz
The Path of Least Resistance

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

If life deals you a pile of scraps, just stitch them together one by one. When you're done, you'll have a more harmonious life – and a beautiful treasure.
- Dorothy Morrison

Creativity can replace conformity as the primary mode of social being. We can cling to that which is passing, or has already passed, or we can remain accessible to – even surrender to – the creative process, without insisting that we know in advance the ultimate outcome for us, our institutions, or our planet. To accept this challenge is to cherish freedom, to embrace life, and to find meaning.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Musician, Composer

Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself.
- James Stephen

Creative people exhibit a continuous discontent with uniformity.
- Glenn Van Ekeren

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Wisdom for The Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, © 2004