17 Favorite Quotes on Creativity

Take a look at what some famous folks throughout history have said about creativity.

1. "The chief enemy of creativity is good taste."

-- Pablo Picasso, painter

2. "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

-- Albert Einstein, physicist

3. "Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."

-- Scott Adams, cartoonist

4. "Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity."

-- Edwin H. Land, scientist and inventor

5. "Necessity is the mother of invention, it is true, but its father is creativity, and knowledge is the midwife."

-- Jonathan Schattke, scientist

6. "The whole difference between construction and creation is this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists."

-- Charles Dickens, author

7. "Creativity is a drug I can't do without."

-- Cecil B. DeMille, film producer

8. "It is wise to learn; it is God-like to create."

-- John Saxe, poet

9. "Our current obsession with creativity is the result of our continued striving for immortality in an era when most people no longer believe in an afterlife."

-- Arianna Huffington, author and pundit

10. "True creativity often starts where language ends."

-- Arthur Koestler, novelist and essayist

11. "The art of creation is older than the art of killing."

-- Andrei Voznesensky, poet

12. "Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights activist

13. "The life of the creative man is led, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes."

-- Saul Steinberg, artist

14. "No matter how old you get, if you can keep the desire to be creative, you're keeping the man-child alive."

-- John Cassavetes, actor

15. "A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something."

-- Frank Capra, American film director

16. "There is a correlation between the creative and the screwball. So we must suffer the screwball gladly."

-- Kingman Brewster, American diplomat, former president of Yale University

17. "Creative minds always have been known to survive any kind of bad training."

-- Anna Freud, founder of child psychoanalysis